Children and Painting

Every elementary art teacher I know has this book. I have taught for 9 years, and I learned things from this book! It has great tips and ideas for running a creative, yet organized, art class. The projects look great. Her clay book is also helpful!

I am professional artist and my primary medium is painting. I also hold an MFA in Painting and Drawing and I have been teaching art to adults and children for 20 years now. This book is the best resource I have seen on teaching painting to children. I have actually used one of the exercises on texture with my adult students and adapted it to charcoal and acrylics. I want to encourage any elementary classroom teacher who wants to teach painting to students to buy this book! Please don't be afraid of paint and the mess as the benefits far outweigh the effort. The author understands the process and techniques of painting and her easy-to-follow her exercises will ensure satisfaction, fun and success. The book will give detailed information on setting up your classroom for painting, specific suggestions on which paints and brushes and papers will work best, materials to gather for study observation and motivation. In my years of training classroom teachers to build an art curriculum and I came to understand the frustrations of classroom teachers not knowing which brushes to use for which type of paint, not understanding how to build and layer a painting, how to guide students through the difficult parts and motivate them to keep working. This book demystifies all that and more. It is full of specific lesson plans to help you plan a sequential curriculum and teach your students basic visual literacy and the deep satisfaction of creating and expressing.

This is one of the most practical and teacher-friendly books I have ever purchased. I teach art at an elementary school and my students have loved using the techniques and projects from this book!Topal provides excellent examples throughout including lovely color reproductions of both children's and professional artwork. Her explanations are clear and the materials list is not extravagant for most of the projects. Every regular classroom teacher would benefit from the beautifully layed out art elements and principles in this book. At the very least it would be worth having as a resource in a school library. This book is a keeper!