Mind Blowing Artist of the Month for March!

My daughter and I at our Art Show last year- me in my Starry Night Dress!!  This year- it will have LED light upgrades!!!

Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists and I am so excited to celebrate his birthday, artwork and life during the month of March.  I found a glog from Glogster that I put on my Artist of the Month page to share with students.   I even have a fake Van Gogh 'ear' that I promise to show students if they do a great job during art time.  The fourth graders complete a Van Gogh inspired Cityscape collage that I learned from an awesome FAEA conference several years ago.  It involves having the students creating an impressionistic background (sky) similar to Van Gogh's using paint or oil pastels.  Then the students use cardboard painted black or even black cardstock to cut our a variety of rectangular shaped buildings.  They also use other colors of cardboard to make small windows and other details.

 They turn out AMAZING and this year I plan on making them even better using paper circuits so they really light up!!!  I can't wait.  I show them a few short videos and read them excerpts from the Getting to Know Van Gogh Book and also a great book called The Starry Night by Neil Waldman.  It is a book about a boy in New York City who meets Van Gogh painting in Central Park.  All the illustrations are beautiful impressionistic depictions of various places in New York City. In the end the boy sees Van Gogh's famous Starry Night painting in the MOMA and Van Gogh disappears.....mysteriously!
  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563977362/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 
There is also a great Starfall online book for younger students. If you have an iPad there is also an AWESOME app that allows you to move your fnger over the Starry Night and move the paint and brushstrokes interactively!  Really neat!
The MetMuseum also has a cool Van Gogh Interactive site that allows students to study his drawings and create their own.  The real Starry Night can be found at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  They have a cute online art game called Destination Modern Art in which the students can look closer at the painting, review facts about the artist and complete an activity about the color in the painting and a poem.

Artist	Vincent van Gogh
Year	1889
Medium	Oil on canvas
Location	Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Dimensions	29 in × 36.25 in
	73.7 cm × 92.1 cm I also just saw this really cool optical illusion trick that I will be sharing with my students- it involves staring at the black and white swirling lines for 30 seconds and then looking at the Starry Night and it REALLY looks like it is moving!! How cool!

Here are some of my students Van Gogh Cityscapes from previous years.