Fantastic Friday with the Arts - Rockwell/Big Band

Welcome everyone!

On this fantastic Friday, we are studying the American Artist and Illustrator Norman Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978). We began this lesson by learning a bit about his life. I found a wonderful bio sheet on him at teachervision. It is a pay site, but they will let you print out a few for free. Here is the link - Norman Rockwell Printable (5th - 8th Grade) - TeacherVision.com

Next, we looked at a Norman Rockwell book from the library. My kids loved his work. They could really identify with the everyday situations in his paintings. I also found a great packet of activities online at The Norman Rockwell Museum. The packet can be downloaded as a pdf and printed from this link -http://www.nrm.org/pdfs/family-guide.pdf. It was just full of fun activities that helped the kids really explore the paintings. The last page of the packet is a blank Saturday Evening Post cover template. As Rockwell was most known for his covers of this popular magazine, I thought it only proper that we try our own Saturday Evening Post covers. We discussed the fact that Rockwell was an illustrator portraying endearing scenes of everyday life. That they are in fact a good example of narrative art - artwork created to tell a story. I then set the kids off on their mission - to create their own magazine cover telling a story about their own life. My son's picture is all about his dog - his best friend.

My daughter decided to draw about her favorite time of day - reading in bed at bedtime with her daddy.

Here is Abbey's finished masterpiece - ready for publication!

Our music connection this week is big band/swing music. It was a popular style of music during Rockwell's time. I found a bio sheet for him at teachervision as well. Here it is - Swing Was the Thing Printable (5th - 8th Grade) - TeacherVision.com. We talked a bit about Benny Goodman and listened to his big band music while working on our magazine covers. I found great videos of his music on youtube.

Well guys - that 's it for this week! Have fun creating!