Grades/Level: Lower Elementary (K–2)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English–Language Arts
Time Required: Long–Term Unit
Six to eight class periods
Author: Diane Freiberg, Teacher, Broad Avenue School, Los Angeles Unified School District

Permissions:
The lesson plan and downloadable materials on this page are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Lesson Overview

Students write and illustrate a short fantasy story based on the book Corduroy. They create a character who has an adventure in a palace. The decorative arts collection at the Getty Museum provides inspiration for this palace setting.

Learning Objectives

Students should be able to:
• create fictional characters and develop stories through which they experience the Getty Museum.
• connect historical facts to works of art in the Getty Museum's collection.
• identify different styles of historic furniture.
• incorporate their knowledge about decorative arts into a creative story tied in with a field trip to the Getty Museum. The Getty's online collections at getty.edu can be used for a virtual tour.

Materials

• Art supplies: paper, crayons, paint
• Corduroy by Don Freeman
• (optional) Pictures or videos of castles and/or palaces in France

Lesson Steps

Part One—Six-page storybook. (Complete about one week before the field trip.)
1. Prepare small 6-page booklets using half sheets of plain paper stapled together.

2. In these booklets, students quickly sketch in pencil the framework for a story following the format below.

(Spend about 10 minutes drawing one image per page.)

Page 1—Your character is at home.
Page 2—Your character goes somewhere.
Page 3—Your character falls into a hole (or goes up an escalator) and lands in a palace.
Page 4—Strange things happen here.
Page 5—A superhero rescues your character.
Page 6—Your character is safe at home again.

3. Students tell their stories to a partner using the storybooks as a guide. Save the storybooks.

Part Two—Read Corduroy.
1. Read and discuss Corduroy in the Open Court Reader Kindness Unit. Note that Corduroy's adventure follows the same format as the storybooks they just created: Corduroy is in the toy department; he goes searching for his button; he steps onto an escalator, and ends up in the furniture department, thinking he is in a palace; he topples over a lamp; the night watchman rescues him; and the night watchman returns Corduroy to the toy department.

2. Ask students to start thinking about writing the stories they outlined in their 6-page storybooks. Each page should be a mini-chapter. Students should not complete the stories until after their visit to the Getty Museum (or a virtual tour on the Web site).

Part Three—Prepare for the field trip.
1. Prepare your itinerary and familiarize yourself with the decorative arts collections at the Getty Museum. Be able to identify the different styles (Rococo, Baroque, Neoclassical) and the arrangement of the galleries.

2. Teach several short 10-minute lessons about the history of France during the period of Louis XIV-XVI and the French Revolution. (Most of the furniture at the Getty came from France.) These can include clips from travel videos about France, connections to the American Revolution (France was an ally against the British, tie in with George Washington), draw a French flag, locate France and Paris on the map, etc.

3. Introduce vocabulary (Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassical) and pre-teach some of the characteristics of each style, describing their differences and similarities.

Part Four—Field trip to the Getty Museum's decorative arts collection (or a virtual tour on the Web site).
1. Students can imagine that they are the characters from their 6-page storybooks. As they take the tram at the Getty Center, they are heading up to an imaginary palace.

2. During your visit have the students sketch several examples of furniture. Discuss and have students identify the various styles.

Part Five—Finish the storybooks (after field trip).
1. Students finish writing their stories, incorporating their favorite artwork from the Getty Museum into the descriptions of their imaginary palaces.

2. The final product will be a 6-chapter mini-fantasy book. Each page is a chapter with an illustration. Students can decorate the cover with images of Getty objects from the Web site.

Standards Addressed

Visual Arts Standards for California Public Schools
Grade 2
Historical & Cultural Context
3.1 Explain how artists use their work to share experiences or communicate ideas.
3.2 Recognize and use the vocabulary of art to describe art objects from various cultures and time periods.

Language Arts Standards for California Public Schools
Grade 2
2.1 Write brief narratives based on their experiences:
a. move through a logical sequence of events.
b. describe setting, characters, objects, and events in detail.