The Dallas Museum of Art has a wonderful Monet Painting in a beautiful gold frame which inspired me to create this lesson for our Big Art Day which is fast approaching in Texas schools. For our Big Art day this year I have a Theme....Circle Art! Themes are the way to go when organizing events. I love this new lesson that was inspired by one of my favorite artists, and two favorite bloggers: Painted Paper and Cassie Stephen's who also use themes. I ordered the 10 inch cardboard circle rounds for this lesson, the same size Cassie used in her Dot Day Art. School Specialty has various sizes. The kids loved painting on this canvas instead of paper. We read about Monet's garden and look at prints of his masterpieces. I even show them some of my pictures that I took when I visited his garden in France. On day one, we painted the pond and the water lily pond on a 10 inch cardboard circle on the white side with Prang tempera paint. We also made some Painted Paper for the water lilies Have you check out the Monet lesson over at Painted Paper? On Day two we read another sweet Monet book that emphasized his love of nature and the reflection of light. We also added a shiny frame with Metallic Playcolor sticks similar to the beautiful DMA Painting. Lovely!! The children created the water lily's from the green paper using oil pastels. No tracers here! The flowers from painted scrap paper with tissue centers. Some had a really hard time with the cutting, but we did it! I know Monet would be so proud of their work! I can't wait to hang them up for our Big Art Day Open House next month! Now on display!