A Study on Art Appreciation Learning of Paintings for an Environmental Poster Contest

Abstract

More than 65,000 children's paintings from 110 countries on the theme of "Save the Earth" were donated to the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku). The major purpose of this study was to propose a workshop type of art appreciation learning to facilitate children's responsive appreciation of paintings by the oversea peer groups of children and analyze their responses toward the selected paintings from the above collection to seek for the nature of appreciation. At the same time the unit appreciation program using the randomly selected paintings was implemented in the classroom setting to inquire into the process of art appreciation. The findings shows that the 5th grade children decode the meanings of the rendered details in the paintings and analyze messages. In the learning process in the actual classroom setting, children's focal points changed drastically according to the time progress and it provided the clues for the betterment of the art appreciation lessons.