At the Water Lily Pond with Claude Monet

 

https://www.claude-monet.com/images/paintings/water-lily-pond-with-japanese-bridge.jpg

Shared by Mª Jesús García:

The work of art I´ve chosen is The Water Lily Pond by C. Monet. Before getting to work with the painting itself we´ll do a couple of warm up activities:

First, we´ll revise adjectives of feelings and emotions; -ed/-ing adjectives; synonyms, antonyms and idioms: happy, excited, delighted, glad, over the moon/ sad, depressed, gloomy, miserable, feel blue ...

Then, we´ll follow with an exercise on mindfulness, to help students focus on their daily tasks. Elicit from students the meaning of mindfulness and make sure they understand, then tell them to close their eyes for 2 minutes, get relaxed and imaging themselves in a relaxing place they would like to be.

Now, it´s time to show them the work of art chosen. Explain briefly about the general features of Impressionism, ask them why the think these artists are called Impressionists and then explain it´s due to the idea of their paintings seem more like impressions, sketches, feelings and that for this reason in the Paris exhibitions of the 80s they were critisized and not considered real artists.

Ask students to tell you all the different adjectives that come to their minds when they watch this painting. Encourage them to analyze the colours, shapes, scenery and relate them to the feelings the artist could be reflecting (use modal verbs fo speculation).

And just to finish , show them the video with images by Monet and the music by Don MacLean´s Starry Night, it´ll be a nice way to complete the lesson.