This past week, on Monday, the First Grade visited the Norman Rockwell Museum. Although Norman Rockwell’s work is always of interest, our primary purpose for visiting was to look closely at how Ruth Sanderson’s illustrations tell stories and how they show what she writes in her books.
We looked closely at how Ms. Sanderson shows what an evil character vs. a good character looks like. We looked at how the people in the pictures let us know what they are doing by their gestures. We also talked about foreground and background. Now it is time for the first graders to follow her examples.
First Ms. Sanderson creates a sketch of her ideas for the book. Then she sets up models with special costumes and photographs real people to copy for her paintings. She has many steps to her paintings, but we did not go into that much detail in the discussions with the class.
In the four art classes before the March break first graders will make their own illustrations. Each will pick a scene from a favorite story or just make up a scene. I told them about this and also told them that if they had hats or costumes that they wanted to use for the models, they could bring them on Monday. THIS IS OPTIONAL.
I told them I would let you all know about this so you would know why your son or daughter might want to bring a costume to school on Monday.