Claude Monet  is a great artist to start with introducing art education to kids.

Monet was was a french painter who was considered one of the leaders of the Impressionist movement. The Impressionists painted what they saw and felt as opposed to the exact replica of what there actually was. (Sounds like our toddlers doesn’t it?)

You can get  a condensed picture of Monets life for children.

Monet’s style was such, that he used short brushstrokes and dabs of paint. He used splashes of beautiful colors and painted many flowe and pond scenes in the sunlight.

He wold try to catch the light and reflection in his paintings.

Monet for kids is actually a great starter to bringing culture and art into a child life for a few reasons.

1. He was often not happy with his work and ripped things up and started over and over again. Children need models of artists that are not perfect. When they hear that a famous artist was often not happy with his paintings, it will make them feel like they can also make mistakes and start over.
2. He didn’t paint much realism. I happen to be  firm believer in not giving children  realistic artist to learn from as there is alot more room for error for them. They don’t have to know when they are very young that most of these very successful non realistic artists were in actuality very proficient realists. They just chose to express themselves differently.
3. His style is loose and easy and his techniques are quite easy to follow.

You can view more of Monets paintings at this site and many others to get an idea if you are not familiar with his work.

Below is an activity that the children can do that will help them emulate Monet’s style as they are learning about him at the same time.

Gather some postcards or books from the library that have some of Monet’s images so the children get an idea of what techniques they are trying to emulate. Show them how it looks when the brush is smushed down on the paper as opposed to drawing

Let the children experiment with a  paintbrush on a paper by dabbing and smushing the brush down. Then wet the paper and have them do the same.

Compare the results.

See if you can set up some flowers or have them paint outside in a sunny area.

Let the children decide if they want to paint on the dry paper or the wet paper whichever will give them more of Monet’s feel.

Once they decide, let them look around at either the outdoor surrounding or a flowery setup that you have created for them and them paint using the dabbing and short strokes of Monet.