Hi! Future Ticia 2025 here, and I’m updating our Norman Rockwell artist study. Way back when I wrote this in 2011, there weren’t quite as many resources as there are now, so I’m adding in more to make this a bit more useful for an Artist Study for your history lesson. This would fit in during the Cold War Unit or a Modern Artists unit, depending on how you organize your history lessons. Back when we first learned about him, this was part of our New York Unit for our giant United States Geography. So there are all sorts of different times you could pull in a Norman Rockwell Artist Study. But let’s start finding out about him.
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Norman Rockwell artist study resources
Oh my goodness, right now, I’ve got a YouTube video on from someone’s CC lesson for Norman Rockwell, and it’s clearly for the younger kids, and it’s not my favorite one, so I’m going to embed it and find another one to listen to as I write.
Here are the books I found at my library, there were more originally on the list, but I took out the books for adults:
- Norman Rockwell– I love this series, every time I see our library has a book from this series, I grab it. It’s perfect for 2nd and 3rd grade kids, and the humor is spot on.
- Hi, I’m Norman: the story of American illustrator Norman Rockwell– This came out after I taught my lesson, so I haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet, but it looks perfect
This first video is designed for use with a Classical Conversation (CC) lesson, and goes through the entire process of how that lesson would go. It’s actually pretty cool, but also not my favorite style of video. Also, the person doing the puppetwork hasn’t learned the proper way to do it, and is having the top of the puppet’s head move, rather than the bottom, so it looks wrong, and it’s bothering me.
On the list of random hobbies I briefly had, I took a puppet class. The information I learned will randomly come to me, latch onto things, and get stuck in my head.
This video gives you the basics of his life while she does a “speed paint” in his style. It’s kind of interesting to watch, and during that, you can see a lot of his artwork being flashed across the screen. This is a great video to give you a five-minute overview of his life.
I’m actually really hoping to find a video that lets you try to imitate his artwork, but I haven’t seen any like that. I think that might be hard to find because his style is so very iconic, and each of his works tells such a distinctive story.
A great video to watch if you have older kids, or if your kids are more interested and want to spend more time watching. It’s 30 minutes long, so it’s going to take you some significant amount of time.
I found a perfect Norman Rockwell artist study lesson to share
The first video I found that was a Norman Rockwell “art lesson” wasn’t really an art lesson, it was a lesson about one of his paintings, and was really about racism and then the “art lesson” was just color a printout of the painting, and do your best job coloring because racism is very important to fight. Less than 30 seconds of her art lesson was devoted to art of a 15-minute video.
My eyes cannot roll enough.
That is not an art lesson.
That is a political lesson disguised as an art lesson. It makes me mad because I was so excited to finally find someone who was going to talk about his art and what makes his art special, and she did, but not really. She talked about how in that one picture, he told a story about Ruby Bridges, but the lesson was more about racism and less about the art and the artist. I was looking for a lesson about the art.
So, instead, let me point you to this teacher, who was filming art lessons during COVID. She did exactly what I wanted. She taught them what made him special. He knew how to tell a story with one scene, and in 8 minutes and 28 seconds gave some examples, and then taught them how to make their own with the supplies they might have in their house.
Our original Norman Rockwell artist study
We read this super cute book about Norman Rockwell, which is apparently part of a series. At the time I wrote this, I forgot to put the link in originally. But I highly recommend it. It tells a fair amount about his life and a little bit about how he drew and what his goals and aspirations were.
And then I googled Norman Rockwell pictures, and each kid wrote a story to go with their picture. There was some last-minute trading around of the pictures, but eventually everyone was happy with their pictures.
Here’s Princess’ story to go with this picture: She is waiting for her mom and dad to come..
Pretty good handwriting for a 4-year-old (she copied after I wrote it out for her).
I love the idea of taking a picture or illustration and writing a story around it. Debbie over at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn had been doing this with Selena for a while, and I kept meaning to do this, and now I have. Hopefully, I’ll do it again soon.
Okay, Future Ticia 2025 here, and expanding on this because what I wrote doesn’t really say much.
Here’s what the assignment was:
Take your painting and write a story about what is happening in the painting.
Now, let’s break down for what you can do with that by ability.
- Kindergarten/1st- Write one sentence. If you are doing this at the end of 1st grade, they could probably write two sentences.
- 2nd grade- Write two sentences that have one descriptive word.
- 3rd grade- Write a paragraph of at least four sentences.
- 4th grade- Write a paragraph, in the paragraph use at least two descriptive words.
- 5th grade- Write a paragraph, in the paragraph use at least two descriptive words, and have one complex sentence.
Notice how each grade, the difficulty increases slightly. These are rough guidelines, and obviously you’ll know your kids’ skill levels. Kids in 5th grade are obviously capable of writing more than a paragraph, but the point of this is to write a short story in a few minutes, not spend a whole hour on this activity.
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