I found a cool article in today's Chicago Tribune -- yes, the paper as printed on newsprint paper, not an e-article from the Trib's site -- and I decided to share it here. I'll save my lecture about how actual newspapers are still wonderful things for later.
From the Chicago Tribune, Monday, Decmber 14, 2009
by Vikki Ortiz Healy
Your 6-year-old may be all about Zhu Zhu pets and Hannah Montana this holiday season, but is he or she equally excited about Claude Monet and Norman Rockwell?
Kids should be, says Deb Herman, an associate professor of art and art education at Concordia University Chicago, who has just launched an ambitious online program that aims to make first through eighth graders as conversant about art history as they are about Bakugan.
"There are other countries that do a much better job of really totally embracing art," said Herman, who worked with the John and Frances Beck Foundation in Chicago to develop the free online lessons for teachers and parents to download at cuchicago.edu/artlessons.
The 10-lesson packets--Henri Rousseau and Vincent Van Gogh in second; Georges Deurat and Leonardo da Vinci in fourth--are designed to have kids recognizing 80 masterpieces by the eighty grade. Lessons through fifth grade already are posted. She says sixth grade will come by spring 2010, with seventh and eighth to follow in 2012.
Herman insists that once exposed to the stories behind the artwork, the children are engaged, fascinated and knowledgeable on several levels.
"What we're trying to do is to get the children to start using higher-level thinking skills," she said.
Click on the links above for more information. To expand on the information in the Trib's story, each grade level contains 10 lessons -- one lesson for a specific artist. As of this writing, not all of the links will work, but I'll update this post as more of them go active.
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