Dream Book List

For the past three weeks I have found myself browsing the children's books section of my local library(s).  I love combining literature with my art lessons and find myself doing so more and more lately since I've been working exclusively with early childhood grades.  It's a wonderful feeling to have a group of kindergarten students eagerly raise their hands to guess what might happen next in a story and laugh hysterically when something silly happens.  This let's me know how interested they are in the book and it's a good indicator of whether or not my art lesson will resonate with them.  Often times I'll choose a book to either spark interest in a lesson or support it.  The following are a list of books I would love to use in future art lessons...

A great book about being individual and unique.  However, I would only use it knowing that the majority of my students actually live in homes as opposed to apartment buildings...after all, not everyone is lucky enough to live in a house (including me!).  This could make a great drawing/collage lesson for Kindergarten students ("What might your dream house look like?").

This book describes how animals use their different body parts for various jobs.  I think this would resonate well with Second Grade students...we could create painted paper much like the paper featured in the book and use the sheets to make animal collages.

A great book for a Spring art lesson focusing on birds.  The lesson could focus on various birds you might see in the Spring time, breaking up the parts of their body in various shapes, and using tempera to paint them in.

This book introduces the artists Picasso and Matisse and retells their relationship through humorous illustrations.  If the next artist we focus on is Henri Matisse then I'll be sure to read the students this book at the conclusion of the project (since we've already focused on Picasso).