A for Art book

The visual arts are where I have the least amount of personal exposure in. Possibly because I failed art in Sec 1 and was shamed by my art teacher. But I married the president of the Art Club and my children seem to enjoy and have a flair for art more than I do.

When I saw this book, I Spy, An Alphabet in Art, on Amazon, I immediately bought it. Partially because then I would know 26 great art pieces and not be as ignorant as before but also because it was a really fun and slightly more adult way of learning the ABC.

Each page starts of with "I spy with my little eye something (either beginning or ending) with ..." And there is a painting with something sometimes as common as a Cat for C or uncommon as L for Lily.

Jordan loves looking at the pictures and occasionally trying to draw something from it. Evan can't really be bothered with it although I've seen him take cursory glances at it. But Muffin loved it. He looked at every page, read out every letter and tried his darndest to find the object in the picture that was associated with the letter. Some of them were so way out that even I didn't get it and the ones where it the object ended with the letter, he needed help. 

But he went through the entire book and then flipped back to look at the pictures he liked best. E for elephant was an Indian painting with ceremonial elephants and he was tickled with A for Apple because I asked him where the man's eyes were and he couldn't tell me since the apple blocked his face. (See cover). 

I loved that I wasn't needing to use conventional methods to teach him the alphabets. I hate flash cards and I am desperately trying to wean him off the iPad. I also liked that Muffin wasn't limited to the cartoony run-of-the-mill basic alphabet object references. But most importantly, this was fun and didn't feel like work to either of us although there were occasionally furrowed brows. This was F and poor Muffin couldn't understand why Picasso had painted the fish as a plate on the lady's head.  Neither could I for that matter and I am a grown woman who already knows her alphabets!

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