Art Unit for Claude Monet

Stephanie April 24, 20131303 Views4 min Read

Another one of my favorite artists is Claude Monet. I love his appreciation for natural things and his garden paintings inspire me. In this art unit for Claude Monet you’ll find two art projects, artist and picture study ideas, multiple teaching resources, and more.

Art Appreciation for Claude Monet

Les Nymphéas (Water Lilies) Claude Monet 1920-1926 Oil on Canvas

I always begin our art study with appreciation and a little discussion about the artist. We go online together and view several art pieces by whichever artist we are studying. A great place for that is the Claude Monet Gallery. We talk about and highlight the notable elements of his work. So for Monet some of the things we discussed were the following:

He loved natural things and enjoyed painting them.
He was an impressionist. (Used dabs and chunky strokes when painting.)
He painted several different paintings on the same subject, such as the water lilies. But to him they were all unique and different.
He often painted his garden.
He was a French painter. Born in 1840 and died in 1926
Vocabulary terms: Landscape, Impressionism, Naturalist, Fixative, Blending

Chalk Pastel Water Lily Project

For our primary project I used A Simple Start in Chalk Pastels by Tricia Hodges tutorial for lily pads. It worked perfectly for imitating Monet’s water lilies.

Using A Simple Start in Chalk Pastels by Tricia Hodges was so very easy to do and so enjoyable. It’s helping me to perfectly add the pastel medium to our art program, homeschooling and nature notebooks.

You can read my Full Review HERE.

Below you can see some wonderful samples of this project:

Monet Watercolor Project Tutorial

In addition to our pastel lily pads we explored a very easy watercolor resist idea for Monet from Artree which even has a lovely PDF you can download for free with instructions. The thing I loved about this project was that it was very simple even for very young children and had outstanding results. Artree also has a great Monet Pinterest board!

Follow these simple steps to create your Bridge Over the Lily Pads water color resist project like the ones above:

With crayon draw the water line and then draw lily pads with greens or brown crayon. Then and add colorful dabs for the lilies.
Next draw your bridge with the desired crayon colors. Your watercolors will not paint over the crayon areas.
Next use blue or another warm color to water color over the lily pads as the water. Because of the nature of watercolor this easily gives the feel of water.
Lastly, paint you background in a contrasting warm color.

Monet Study Resources

A wonderful book for children to learn about Monet that I can recommend is Linnea in Monet’s Garden.
You can get Linnea in Monet’s Garden on DVD as well.

How would your child like to be in Monet’s Garden?

As fate would have it we just began using Harmony Fine Arts Grade 4 Lessons and our first artist that we will cover is Monet! The program is adding timely closure to our Monet unit. And below are a few other great resources we like.

Thanks to these lovely ladies hosting these fabulous link ups:Co-op Class Ideas Link Up and…
Amy @ Trivium Tuesday, Hip Homeschool Moms @ Hip Homeschool Hop, Stephanie@ Money Saving Monday Link up,

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Stephanie - Post Author

Stephanie has been a military spouse for 17 years and is a homeschool mom of 10+ years. She is mom to three creative kids from college grad down to third grade. Her homeschool style is eclectic with Charlotte Mason and classical influences. She and her husband of 22 years serve and live wherever the US Army sends them. She also shares her homeschool and life experiences on her other blogs,Harrington Harmonies and Nature Notebook When she isn't teaching, writing or moving she enjoys sightseeing, gardening, and cooking.