[Mid] A game to teach your children

Walking through that Dutch still life exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art
yesterday brought to mind a game my older sister and I played when we were
children on days where the weather was too inclement to go out and play.

My mom had studied art in college and so as a result, we had a fair amount
of art books around the house when we were little. One in particular, we
kids sort of "adopted" for ourselves. It was some big book on famous
painters and paintings, and had lots of big colour plates in it of many well
known paintings.

We played "I Spy", where one person would find some itsy bitsy little detail
in a painting and the other person had so much time to find it. We found
ourselves particularly drawn to the works of Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter
Bruegel the Elder and other Northern and Italian Renaissance works because
of the incredible amount of detail in those pieces.

Not only did it teach me art and artists, but it trained my eye to detail,
so it had a double benefit. My sister was far better at it than I ever was,
but she has since gone on to establish a somewhat modestly successful career
as an artist in her own right.

I, on the other hand, have learned the arts of calligraphy and illumination,
and my mother was amazed yesterday at how much detail I picked out in the
Illuminated MSS. exhibit that she missed! She, on the other hand, picked out
more details of the Dutch exhibit than I did, but I, the SCAdian, was too
busy looking at stuff one could use for documentation!

If you want a good way to entertain the kids on rainy days, get some good
art books from the library and have them play "I Spy". Bet your kids are
already devouring those "Where's Waldo" and "I Spy" books that are so hugely
popular. Well, what better way to expose them to art than to use it to play
games with? It makes learning art fun and interesting and leads to a greater
appreciation of art later on in life!

YIS,
Lady Saradwen Ariandalen
Marche of Gwyntarian
(Akron/Kent, OH)

From: Sally Burnell <sburnell@raex.com>
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Received on Thu Dec 30 20:45:11 1999