Montessori Inspired Art Appreciation Activities

Without much preparation, planning, or intention, Art as we know it, feel it, experience it, experiment with it took a huge part in our everyday life. We started 30 Days of Creativity and Art to help navigate our homeschooling towards the creative side of learning and I do not think we will ever stop. Whatever it is – learning poems, listening to classical music, creating mosaics with leaves outside, looking for funny cloud shapes in the sky, painting on a mirror – it all provided a new perspective, and simple fun, discovering life and expressing creativity in a new way every day.

With a 3-year-old preschooler and a new baby, time was becoming an issue. Planning, setting up activities, preparing printables all became a bit too much to handle. As often it happens in life, help arrived when I needed it the most. I received Art Appreciation Toolbox from a brilliant company Montessori By Mom. It is a great concept and long-awaited help for parents who wish to use the Montessori method with their children at home, however, they struggle to find time to create resources and do endless research.  Teresa and Nathan  – creators of Montessori By Mom – thoroughly thought through and assembled together a set of activities and toolboxes to make your life easier and enhance the learning of your children by assembling together resources, videos, printables, high-quality materials, and explicit instructions. I am very passionate to tell you all about it. Let me tell you, there wasn’t one day since we got it when my daughter A. would not choose their work from her Montessori shelves. Just yesterday I heard her call: “Mom, I found Kandinsky! I want to make a picture inspired by Kandinsky”.

Montessori Inspired Art Appreciation Toolbox included:

*(our favourite) set of picture masterpieces
* two  canvas masterpieces prints
* poster with arts names and pictures for matching,
* make your own paint kit ( cool, eh?)
* painting supplies set
* Montessori Shape Workbook
* Instructions and videos

This equipped me and my child with many opportunities to explore different Art styles, make science experiments using a DIY paint kit, learn about shapes we see in our environment, and create A’s own masterpieces.

As you probably know in a Montessori environment children are surrounded by beauty, they work on something when they are inspired to do so, children learn to appreciate the process of creating over the final result and their work resembles experience they would have in real life.

Paintings included in Mini Masterpiece Set intrigued A and gave a great scope of various amazing artists. The size of the cards was perfect and must felt great in the child’s hands. These are fabulous for the initial introduction to the world of famous art creations. With the help of these cards, A could observe the way artists used space, colors, shapes in their work. She learned to differentiate between realistic and non-realistic paintings.  A seemed to be totally absorbed by the masterpieces.

Later she enjoyed matching pictures to the back and white copy, which required a great deal of concentration.

After she gets more familiar with these masterpieces we will continue using this material to learn about the artists behind the masterpieces.

The next day it was time to make her own masterpiece using chemical-free powder to make watercolours. Montessori By Mom had a clever idea for children to create watercolours for painting using mortar and pestle.

There are so many great advantages and learning opportunities that came in place:

– motor exercise
– learning about the science behind mixing two colours to receive third
– learning to follow the process of creating A’s watercolours.
– practising to clean up and tidy A’s art space

Once it is time for us to learn about Africa we will use mortar and pestle to create paint using berries and curry powder as suggested in the instructional video.

After experimenting with mortar and pestle we decided to use q-tips to create watercolours straight in the palette. I found that my 3-year-old daughter did not have enough patience to make each colour separately for painting using mortar and pestle.
I have to say in the end paintings looked really fresh and colours come out very natural and vibrant. There are so many other art projects that I plan to do with A using Montessori by Mom’s DIY painting kit.

Another day, as a part of 30 Days of Creativity and Art Series that we started a while ago, we decided to look into the way artists used shapes in their paintings. Montessori Shape Work book – a part of Art Appreciation Toolbox – was a great resource for learning to identify shapes in real life. Kandinsky’s painting was a wonderful inspiration for A to create her own using different shapes. You can read more about it in this post.

As you can see my darling had lots of fun!
Montessori by Mom toolboxes are curated by AMS accredited Montessori teachers. With a subscription, you will receive access to videos and printables, explicit instructions and information along with access to an online community where you can join discussions and receive the necessary support.

With this coupon code: AFFMONA new subscribers receive $10 discount.

(This is not a sponsored post. No monetary compensation was offered or received. All opinions are my own. Montessori By Mom did provide Art Appreciation Toolbox for review purposes.)

  About Anastasia. Anastasia is the founder of Montessori Nature, a blog about Montessori - inspired and Nature-based explorations. She taught in a Montessori setting for 10 years and has been practicing the Montessori way of learning and living for the last 19 years. She loves designing engaging educational printables for children. Learn more here.