The phrase “I don’t really understand art,” is one I hear often.

Over the past 3 years of teaching at SKETCH I have found an interesting paradox.  The most common statements I hear from kids are “I love stories,” and “I love doing art.”  It is the parent saying that they don’t understand it.

I’m not sure when this shift happens, but we adults seem to have made art history much more complicated than necessary.  We know that study of the fine arts arts benefits students. but we are stymied with the idea of teaching art history.  So where do we start?

Kids love art.  They love touching and doing, seeing and creating.  Combine that tactile experience with storytelling, and you have just begun teaching art history.

Free Art History Projects

Okay, lets begin with the fun stuff.  Everyone loves to create, and one of the best ways to learn about art it to get involved with it.

• The Art of Education – These are probably the prettiest lesson plans on the web.  They cover a variety of topics, and are categorized by age.
• AHC Project Page – Artists Helping Children is a simple but useful site that provides printable coloring pages, drawing lessons, and craft projects.
• Art Junction – Art Junction specializes in exercises to get kids thinking like artists.
• Deep Space Sparkle – Don’t you just love that name?  Deep Space Sparkle is run by an art teacher and is filled with creative lesson ideas. It is super easy to navigate, which makes it one of my favorite.
• Kinder Art – Don’t let the Kinder portion of KinderArt throw you.  This site has lots of art and art history ideas to offer students of all ages. I love that you can search lesson ideas by medium.
• Pintura, Art Detective – Ever think of art analysis as intimidating?  This interactive resource will change your mind.  Kids get to become a detective on “The Case of Grandpa’s Painting.”  Watch out – this one can become addictive.
• Practical Pages – If lapbooks or notebooks are your thing, than this is going to become your favorite site.  They offer a large collection of free downloadable pages, and many include a section with project ideas.

Free Art History Educational Resources

Art history is the true stories of people’s lives and their creative expression of those experiences.  Take a look at these great sites to begin your research on a specific artist or movement:

• Art Babble – Videos covering over 1500 artists and many artistic styles.
• Artcyclopedia – A helpful index of images from hundreds of museum sites.  Searchable by title, artist, nationality, movement, and many other factors.
• Art History Resources – Professor Witcombe has collected the most comprehensive directory of sites on the web.  It is enormous, but don’t be intimidated.  I find it easiest to browse by time period/artistic movement.
• Art Images for College Teaching – AICT is a free-use image resource.  Works are in the public domain on a free-access, free-use basis, and are printable for educational purposes.  I often link to this source for my SKETCH classes.
• Jacques-Eduard Berger Foundation – Don’t miss the interactive timeline at the bottom of the page.  It is easy to overlook, but it is my favorite part of this site.
• Khan Academy – Known as “SmArtHistory” this site is perfect for students looking to deepen their knowledge.  This is an amazing resource, full of extraordinary free art history video lectures.

Free Art History Museum Sites

Some of my favorite sites are those run by museums.   The benefit of these sites is that they are well funded, and therefore updated often.  They also usually offer wonderful digital reproductions of many of the works in their collection.

• MOMA Interactives – The NY Museum of Modern Art offers a fun virtual tour the museum. Kids can click on a piece of art and choose from several activities including learning about the artist and their work.
• The Met for Kids – The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s kids’ page offers a unique song based approach to learning about art, along with interactive games.
• NGA Kids – The National Gallery of Art offers both games and activities encouraging children to create their own works of art.
• SmART Kids – The University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art is one of the most visually appealing kids art sites.  It allows kids to virtually meet an artist, take a studio tour, and study art vocabulary.  Make sure to check out the artwork of the month.
• Smithsonian Institute Art Museum for Kids – This one is lots of fun.  Cappy the Giraffe guides kids as they enjoy stories and learn the principles of art.

Free Artist Specific Activities

The majority of my personal research comes from artist specific sites, but unfortunately they are mostly aimed at adults.  These are a few exceptions that allow kids to begin to experiment in the genre of the artist right on the screen.  Here are my favorite:

• Paint Like Jackson Pollock – Scribbling taken one step further.  Kids get to use their cursor to “splat” paint in an abstract method similar to that of Jackson Pollock.
• Picasso Head.com – A well designed click and drag site that walks kids through making their own surrealistic “Picasso head.”
• Piet Mondrian – create your own balance of color just like Mondrian.
• Dale Chihuly – learn about glass blowing and create a virtual sculpture.

There is so much more.  These are only the tip of the iceberg.  Check out my Master Artist Pinterest page  for a less organized, but more complete list of art history resources.  ~ And happy exploring!