Art appreciation that includes picture study is a simple way to let your children enjoy lots of great paintings in a non-threatening way. There are ways of making the experience low stress and enjoyable. The trick is to ask questions about the painting that have no real right or wrong answers.

• Open ended questions
• Questions that solicit the child’s opinion
• Questions that allow for creative answers and imagination
• Questions that put you and your child on the same level, learning to love art or at least slowing down to think a bit about each piece of art together

I know when I started with picture study with my own children I felt a little awkward trying to draw out their feelings and thoughts about the painting we were focusing on for the week. I learned some tricks to get the discussion going and I would love to share some ideas with you.

Art Cards – Questions to Get a Discussion Going

Use these printable questions to stimulate some discussion. Choose the questions randomly or allow your child to choose which card they want to use.

Suggestions For Using These Art Cards

You can print the questions out on cardstock and cut them apart. I think it would be great to laminate them so you could use them over and over again. I might store them in an envelope in the front of the child’s art binder or you could even hole punch them and put them on a ring to hang on a bulletin board or near your art display if you have one.

Another idea is to give each child a question card to use on an art museum field trip. They could use the card to study more closely a painting they find that catches their interest.

Hope you enjoy some picture study this week!

You may be interested in reading my post: Art Appreciation – A Starting Point.

I am submitting this entry to the Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival and if you have any entries you would like to submit, you can send them to this email address: [email protected].