Picture This – Art Exploration for Kids “Now You See It, Now You Don’t”

Kindergarten through 5^th grade.

“What is real and what is not? We’ll share Michael Garland’s book Dinner at Magritte’s and then explore the art of Surrealism.”

As children enter, have them browse books on Surrealism, Magritte, Dali, plus general art picture books & Greg Tang’s Math-terpieces: the Art of Problem-Solving (Picture Book Tang), Imagine a Day, Imagine a Night, Imagine a Place (all Picture Book Gonsalves)

· Read Changes (Picture Book Browne)

· Share nonsense/surreal poem: One fine day in the middle of the night / Two dead boys got up to fight / Back to back they faced each other / Drew their swords and shot each other / A deaf policeman heard the noise / Came up and shot those two dead boys / If you don’t believe this tale is true / Ask the blind man, he saw it too!

· Read Magritte’s Marvelous Hat (Picture Book Johnson)

· Read Dinner at Magritte’s (Picture Book Garland)

· Share pages from Now You See It—Now You Don’t: Rene Magritte (J759.9493 WEN) & The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Salvadore Dali (J759.6 WEN), The Art Book for Children v. 2 p.40 “Camembert clocks (J709 REN)

· Show pages 8-10, 14-17 from Imagine That! Activities and Adventures in Surrealism (J709.04 RAI) to inspire kids to create Surrealist collages using pictures cut from magazines and markers to create pictures in the style of Magritte & Dali (dream-scapes, things out of scale, day/night transposition, faces made of other things, melting clocks, etc.…) Supplies: 11 x 17 paper, markers, scissors, glue, magazines & wallpaper scraps

· Resource Book: Salvador Dali & the Surrealists (J759.6 ROS)

· Music playing while making pictures “Hey Picasso” album by Jessica Harper