This painting is by painter Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678). Its title is inspired by a Flemish proverb "As the Old Sang the Young Play Pipes." Do young children need to know about these facts when they look at this picture? - No. Then is this an appropriate painting to show young children? - Ya, why not?
Sometimes, we are intimidated by fine art. We're afraid that we may not be in any position to interpret a piece of painting. Also, we assume that children love cartoon and cute stuff, why would we introduce them to a piece of Medieval or Renaissance painting?
But let me tell you, young children actually like looking at landscape paintings and portraits because they are always interested in finding out what's happening to the people in pictures. If we look at Jourdeans's painting as an example, I can already imagining children asking about the dog at the bottom right corner in the picutre. I won't be surprised if they ask about what the children are doing, etc.
As parents and teachers, we don't have to take a visual art 101 course before we can engage in such art talk. To me, this is an alternative to story time; looking at a painting triggers imagination. It may take even longer than a normal story time if we were to go through what each character in the painting is doing. It is a great way to introduce children to art appreciation; they will start to learn to look into the details of a picture, too!
I've written a cross-subject curriculum (art-music) based on this concept, but it's never been used. Then I ran into this great website called ARTISSIMO and I know what's lacking in my design. I strongly recommend all of you to visit this site and play the game "Eye Spies" and "Stories in Art." These two games will give you some new ideas on teaching your children about arts at home! (Other games are super fun, too~~I bet even adults would enjoy it!)
