In our house, Fancy Nancy is kind of a big deal! Both of my girls love her books! (And I have to admit they are a favourite of mine too!) Anytime our kids latch onto a favourite book or take a particular interest in it, we will try to tie it into a mini unit study. Sometimes the study will last a day, and other times we can stretch it over the course of an entire month. The book we fell in love with recently was “Fancy Nancy Aspiring Artist”. We worked through the artists and ideas presented in the book over the course of 2 weeks although we definitely didn’t work on it everyday. I loved how this book gently introduces Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas, and Jackson Pollock.
We started out learning about New York City which is where Fancy Nancy’s best friend travels to at the beginning of the book.
The first artist they studied was Edgar Degas. They worked on painting beautiful ballerinas just like he was known for.
The second artist we learned about was Claude Monet. Even though Claude Monet was known for painting outdoors in all kinds of weather (even the freezing cold), it was too cold for us to venture outdoors this week. Instead of going outside, we found inspiration from a fake bouquet of flowers that we had leftover from a tea party.
The third artist we studied was Henri Matisse. This has always been a favourite artist in our house because of all of the colours and shapes that he uses. The girls especially enjoyed finding colourful paper that matched Fancy Nancy to cut out and create their own artwork.
The fourth artist we studied was Jackson Pollock. We found it inspiring that despite the fact that he was kicked out of several high schools as a teenager, and later was caught for stealing food and gasoline because of his dire financial situation, he continued to persevere and eventually became a successful artist. We found an old white curtain and had way to much fun using all of our old paint to splatter on the canvas just like Jackson Pollock was known for.
We worked through our unit study guides and practiced drawing portraits of people in our family, worked on our doodling skills, and learned how to address a proper envelope. We also worked on our reading comprehension and vocabulary using examples from the book.
We had some friends over for our very own Art Exhibit and served them creative juice, art palette cookies, and carrot sticks. We then ended the week by visiting the Remai Modern Art Museum.
This was such a fun and simple unit study. I love how much information the girls (and boys) were able to retain in such a short amount of time. Next time, I would love to try this unit study in the summer when we can take these projects outdoors and get even more creative!
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