I have been flashing art pieces from Vincent van Gogh flashcards to my children. They even memorise all the art pieces that I have been flashing to them. What amazes me is that they love “The Yellow House” and “The potato eaters”, which I am not sure why. In order to get further in touch with Vincent’s art, I have given them a task to do. That is to draw the yellow house from their own imagination. Before that, I did a brief explanation (a history of “The Yellow House”) to my children. Do you want to know too? It was August and Vincent didn’t have any friends in Arles and was very lonely. He decided to invite a fellow artist, Paul Gauguin, to come and stay with him so they could paint together. Paul accepted his invitation. Below is Vincent’s painting of the little yellow house where the two men collaborated. My boy was asking where can we see the real yellow house. I asked my friend: Google. Sad to know, we can’t visit the house today because it was severely damaged by a bomb during World War II.
The children begin their mission of painting their own yellow house. I placed the drawing in front of them for them to have a reference and not forgetting that the topic for the painting today is “The Yellow House”. Their imagination sometimes can be so rich that they will lost their focus. Being able to imagine and think out of the box is good but as for today, we have a topic to focus on, they will have to learn how to focus on it. (Pardon on how I made the flashcard stands >_<)
Over here, you can see them started to draw out their imaginative yellow house while I quickly run into the kitchen and have their lunch prepared.
After some time, finally their work is out. Guess whose art pieces below belongs to? Bet you can tell straight away. Today’s art lesson is about imagination (imagine their own yellow house) and focus (focus on the topic). Not sure if it sounds contradicting to you but one thing to note is that participation in the arts focus improves the children’s abilities to concentrate and focus in other aspects of their lives as well.
Are you painting your yellow house today?