Learning Art Through Literature

I love reading books with My Little Bookworm and seeing his interests and curiosity sparked. He gets interested in everything he reads about! That's how we have been doing a lot of his homeschooling these past few weeks - we read lots of books!

This past week we read Color Chaos. It was one of his choices from the library, and he loved learning about the primary and secondary colors as we read through the story. Even after the story was done, he was walking around the house categorizing everything he saw according to its color.

I decided to capitalize on his interest and put him to work doing some color wheel projects.

We did this fun science experiment using water, food coloring, and cups. It didn't work for us, but I guess that's what makes science so interesting - it's unpredictable sometimes. We talked a lot about what was supposed to happen, and reasons why it maybe didn't work. He loved it all the same.

Then I thought he would love making a color wheel. But when I suggested the idea he balked. "I don't like coloring or painting," he declared (his interests seem to change daily lately). He said, " I only like doing things with toys." So I made that work, and had him create a color wheel with his favorite toys!

Again, he loved it, and was very engaged with the work. Even after he finished the wheel, he made several "robots" and pointed out to us all that he had used all the primary and secondary colors to create them - straight off his wheel!

There are so many fun books about art. Here are a few I really like. Read them with your little guys and see where their interest and imagination takes them! Real and lasting learning only seems to happen for my kids when they care - and they usually care about what they read about in books!