This Claude Monet Art Project is part of my second grade art curriculum. Introduce children to famous artworks and details about Claude Monet as they engage in their own outdoor drawing experience and create a Monet-inspired water garden studio art project.
Famous Artist Series from Kids Art Projects 101
This approach is awesome because it layers art history connections with guided instruction about the elements of art and principles of design. The scripted PowerPoint format can be easily utilized in a variety of settings. In this video, I share specific tips and considerations to help you implement the unit with ease.
Watch the video, or read the transcript below if you prefer.
~VIDEO TRANSCRIPT~
Hi Everyone,
I am excited to present to you the ninth installation in our famous artist series. This one is all about Claude Monet. The purpose of this video is to give you an overview of how I’ve set up this unit so that when you start it with your kiddos, you can hit the ground running. So let’s dive right in!
CLAUDE MONET ART PROJECT SESSION 1
I’ve organized the unit into four sessions, ideally 40 minutes each. Of course, if your setting has a different amount of time, just get a layout of how it works and then see how you can make it work for your setting.
So for the first session, you will be presenting a digital storybook. In the digital storybook, you’ll present a ton of paintings by Claude Monet. You’ll be giving kids just a general overview of what his interests were as an artist.
They will learn that he was incredibly interested in how light, the weather, and the season affect the way things look. He was notorious for painting the same things over and over in different lighting, like the haystacks that were near his house in France. You’ll also learn that he painted outside a lot. Get the kids familiar with the term “plein air painting.”
You will also help them understand that he was not just an artist. He was also somewhat of a horticulturalist. He was super interested in botany, plants, and gardening. He made many, many paintings in his personal garden, which is still open to the public to this day! He later added a water garden, and that water garden became pretty critical in his body of work. He did more than 300 paintings of the water lilies and the bridge he had built over this pond on his property in France!
So after taking a look at all these works and talking to the kids about these different facets of Claude Monet, you’re going to have them do a plein air exercise. I’d stick with dry materials to keep it simple, like crayons, markers, and colored pencils. Have them step outside for 10 to 15 minutes, sit down and look at the world around them, and experience what that would have been like for Claude Monet to be sitting outside.
- What do things look like outside?
- How is the sunlight affecting things?
- How is the wind affecting things?
- How’s the season affecting the way things look right now?
You really want them to have that plein air experience. Let them know there are tons of artists beyond Claude Monet who work in this format too! So once you get that done, if time permits, I would recommend having them share what they created in their plein air exercise with a classmate, just to show off what they came up with.
That will wrap up Session One.
CLAUDE MONET ART PROJECT SESSION 2
In Session Two, you’re going to be reading them a story called The Magical Garden of Claude Monet by Laurence Anholdt. It’s a cute story that really highlights the idea of Monet as a gardener and an artist, and kids enjoy it. Then, you’re going to have them start the studio project!
You are ultimately going to have the kids create a water lily. They may or may not be familiar with water lilies from their own life, so you’ll want to review what it is, how they grow in a pond, how they’re actually flowers, and all that before starting.
Begin Claude Monet Studio Project
They’re going to be doing this project in a few stages. It involves painting, coloring, cutting, and gluing, but the paint needs to happen first to give everything time to dry. For this first section of the studio project, they will be painting with some sponge brushes and paper plates. You will need one nine-inch paper plate and four of the smaller 6-inch sizes per student.
Drop a little bit of blue and a little bit of green tempera paint on the large plate, and give the student a sponge brush. Their job is to mix those colors and spread the paint out all over the plate. You don’t need to paint both sides, just the front.
Next, you are going to move on to the smaller plates. Put a squirt of green and a little squirt of yellow on one of the plates, and have kids use a fresh sponge brush to spread them out fully on the front of the plate. They don’t need to paint the back.
Then, they’re going to follow this with three other plates:
- One is going to be bright yellow
- One is going to be dark pink
- One is going to be light pink
I recommend using red with a little bit of white for the dark pink, and white with a little bit of red for the light pink. Once you get those painted, you’re going to leave them out to dry for 30 to 40 minutes.
I have also included a coloring handout for the end of Session Two in case you have some time at the end. It is a little activity that links back to The Magical Garden of Claude Monet from the beginning of Session Two. It tasks kids with making one of the water lilies in the water garden stand out from the others. You want them just coloring for this one, no paint needed.
I had a few kids try this the other day, and it really showed that you never know what you’re going to get! One boy’s special lily was one that he created in the middle that wasn’t even part of the original handout. Another little girl made all the other ones gray, and then for her special one she just went berserk with color!
When they are finished working on that, you’re at the end of Session Two.
CLAUDE MONET ART PROJECT SESSION 3
For Session Three, you will start with two quick fun facts, then dive right back into the studio work. You really want to be prepared and efficient about handling Session Three because it’s packed! Session Three is broken into three phases: the tracing and cutting phase, an embellishing phase, and a layering and gluing phase. I have step-by-step directions in the slideshow for all those, but I just wanted to quickly talk about the stencils.
Stencils
I offer two stencil options, one a bit more complex than the other. I recommend sticking with the simple one for your really little guys, and maybe printing this onto cardstock to make it a little sturdier for tracing. They need to trace the large one of these on the dark pink plate, the medium one on the light pink plate, and then the smallest one on the yellow plate. Then, they’ll cut all three out, stack them, and set them aside.
It’s excellent cutting practice, but it’s definitely a test of endurance! Steer clear of this one for your really little kids, because they’ll most likely get a little bit overwhelmed by all that cutting.
The Lily Pad
Next, you’re now going to move on to the Lily Pad. This one doesn’t have a stencil, but there’s a step-by-step guide included. You’ll have them make a dot in the middle of the plate and two other dots along the edge of the plate. They’ll use those as guides to cut a big triangle chunk out of the plate to give it the distinctive lily pad shape. If they want to curve those edges, they can, but they don’t need to. That is it for the Lily Pad!
This next bit is optional, but kids seem to enjoy adding some embellishments right on top of the paint. Put out some light blue, dark blue, or even white or gray oil pastels, and let them draw directly on the plates! Swirls, lines, or other patterns entirely, it’s all up to them if they add anything.
Make sure kids keep their fingers away from their eyes when they’re working with oil pastels, and give them a chance to wash their hands really well afterward. Then you’re ready to move on to the layering and gluing stage.
Go over the layering without using glue first. Start with the blue plate on the bottom, then the green lily pad, followed by dark pink, light pink, and yellow for the flower.
Once they understand the layering, have them glue each layer down one at a time. Be warned, little guys tend to overdo it when it comes to glue! The bottle is big, and they end up using way too much. I like to squeeze out a little puddle on a piece of cardboard for them, and then just hand them a Q-tip. Then they can dip their Q-tip in and apply a little swirl or an X of glue. That is all they need. This reinforces for them that less is more when it comes to glue. So they glue that on, and that is it!
That will take you to the end of Session Three.
CLAUDE MONET ART PROJECT SESSION 4
That moves us on to Session Four, the last session for this project.
See how the petals are curling up in the picture? The way I did that was by winding the petal around a crayon, just like if you were curling a ribbon. You’re training that paper to curl up just a bit. It doesn’t need to curl tight, you just want them generally curling upward. If they are struggling with this, they can use their fingers and curl it up. With that, the Studio Project is complete!
Now it’s time for a quick review. I have one in the slideshow that has them show a thumbs up for true and a thumbs down for false with a handful of true and false statements. You can do reviews in any way you want. That’s a suggestion. I put in some blank slides if you want to customize the review to however your discussion went.
Art Show Discussion
Then you’re going to have them do an art show. Art shows are, in my opinion, one of the best parts of these lessons! You can have them spread all these lily pads all over the place, then walk around and look at each other’s lily pads. You could assemble them all together and make your own Water Garden, and have other people come in and check it out!
I put in some art show prompts to facilitate a group dialogue about their creations, but try to let that conversation flow organically. You want them to share their work and you want them to see other people’s interpretation of the same project.
Self-Assessment
There is also a self-assessment included. You can print this out for each individual kid, or just walk through these and have them rate themselves with their hand.
The statements they’ll respond True or False to are:
- I painted five plates: one blue, one green, one dark pink, one light pink, and one yellow.
- I traced stencils on the smaller plates and cut them into the layers of a water lily.
- I embellished each plate with oil pastels and glued the layers together.
- I used my materials carefully and I did my best effort with this project.
There’s also a spot for Teacher comments if you want to give any kids individual feedback that you can send home with them.
And that marks the end of this unit!
I added a couple extra storybook suggestions if you have the time to go online or to go to a library and look at the tons of other Monet children’s books out there. At any point, while the kids are working, you might want to consider letting them listen to another story about him, and maybe you can compare stories.
Anyway, that marks the end. I hope that you have fun! I hope you will consider sharing photos or videos of your kids in action on this one. If you have any questions, please let me know. I hope that you enjoyed this and have fun with this one!
More About the Jackson Pollock Art Unit
Engage little artists in a project-based study of Claude Monet in this unit of the Famous Artist series from Kids Art Projects 101. Introduce children to famous artworks and details about Claude Monet as they engage in their own outdoor drawing experience and create a Monet-inspired water garden studio art project.
Inside the unit, you’ll find a 25-page unit guide full of information and tips for teaching this series of art lessons to students in preschool through grade 2.
The unit is broken down into four 40-minute sessions.
For each session, there is a guided presentation that has already been prepared for you and can be used via Google Slides or PowerPoint. The presentation also introduces and guides you through completion of a studio project and follow-up activity.
The 107-page combined PDF and Google Slides full resource includes:
- An original digital storybook designed to expose students to famous artworks and details about Claude Monet
- An “En Plein Air” outdoor drawing experience
- A literacy connection to The Magical Garden of Claude Monet by Laurence Anholt
- A step-by-step studio project guide with clear directions, supply lists, and work sample photos
- Quick fun facts
- A digital lesson review
- An art show prompt with guided questions
- A printable self-assessment
- Early finisher coloring page and book suggestions
- Blank slide templates
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