Giotto: Storytelling Through Pictures

Age 4-5
​Students will study the Scrovegni Chapel by Giotto. The chapel walls are painted with illustrations of Christian stories. After discussing how images can be used to tell stories, students will discuss the process of creating tempera paint. They will use their paint to create a set of images that tell a story. 

Student Group

• Age 4-5

Objectives

• Children will view and interpret artwork by Giotto 
• Children will create a story told through four images 
• Children will create their own paint using pigment (crushed chalk pastels), water and glue

Developmental skills 

• Children will build arm strength and coordination crushing chalk with blocks. 
• Children will describe the changes in chalk as they crush it. This builds vocabulary and develops observational skills and understanding of cause and effect. 
• Children will make predictions about what happens when you mix dry colored powder with a liquid binder. 
  
• Children will build an understanding of how art materials are made. 
• Children will work on identifying how artists create art and tell stories through art: Artists use lines, shapes and colors to make art. 
  
• Children will use fine motor skills when using a paintbrush. 
  
• Children will interpret art and visual symbols, which develops both verbal and visual literacy skills. 
  

Developmental Rationale​

• ​Children in the pre-schematic and schematic stages (age 3-6) create their own symbols for things in their lives. (ex a line may represent their dad.) Ask children in these stages to describe what is going on in their abstract paintings. They may not be abstract to them.

Materials 

• Small bowls (1 per child) 
• Plastic spoons (1 per child) 
• Chalk pastels 
• White glue 
• 12x18 white construction paper, divided into 4 sections 
• paint brushes 
• paint trays 
• ziplock baggies 
• wooden blocks 

Instructional Strategies
Discussion 

• Discuss how Giotto was an Italian painter living about 700 years ago. He was known for his storytelling skills, but back when he was alive a lot of adults couldn't read, and he couldn't always be there to tell his stories aloud. Ask students to guess how Giotto told his stories, if there were no words, and he didn't say them aloud. 
• Discuss Giotto's use of pictures to tell stories. Discuss how a man named Scrovegni asked Giotto to paint his chapel and fill it with stories. 
• Discuss what a chapel is: a small building for Christian worship. This setting is why Giotto decided to paint religious stories. He broke up the walls into small sections and filled each with a different picture. When people looked at them in a row they could read the story. 
• Ask students to guess what story Giotto's paintings are telling? 
• Remind the students afterwards that they interpreted a story without needing any words. Challenge the students to do the same thing. 

Guided Practice 
​Chalk Crushing  

• Discuss with students that when Giotto was painting, it wasn't easy to find paint. He and his assistants had to make it. They used colored powder, called pigment, and mixed it with egg, water and glue. 
• Show chalk to students and ask if they can create colored powder with it? Ask students to describe the chalk pieces. Are they hard or soft? What shape are they? What colors are they? 
• Put a piece of chalk in a baggie and seal it tightly. Ask students how it can be turned into powder. 
• Demonstrate using a wooden block to crush the chalk into powder. 
• Give each child a baggie, let them choose a piece of chalk, and help them to repeat the process. Remind them that the smoother the powder, the smoother the paint. 

Chalk Paint ​

• Ask students to predict what will happen when we mix the chalk powder with water and glue. Will the color change? The texture? 
• Demonstrate pouring some of the chalk into a small bowl, then adding glue and water a little at a time until it resembles paint. 
• Ask students to remember what Giotto added to his pigment: egg. Explain why raw egg is unsafe and why we are using glue instead. 
• Students who finish quickly should practice making more colors by mixing dry pigments and then adding the glue and water again. 

Storytelling Through Pictures  

• Pass out 12x18 inch paper divided into 4 quadrants 
• Remind students that Giotto painted stories about his religion. The stories are about religious figures who were important to the people who came to read the stories. Ask students who are the important people in their lives? Ask them to paint a story about them. 
• Distribute the paint made earlier to each student and demonstrate mixing them into more colors. Ask students if mixing this paint is different from other paint they have used? How? 

Critique 

• Have students clear their work area so only their painting is showing. 
• Move to one painting at a time, asking "what do you see?" Encourage students to define the colors and shapes, identify figures and objects, and interpret the story that is being told. 
• Offer the artist the opportunity to tell the story in their painting if they would like.