Quick recommendations- ROUEN FRANCE with kiddos!!!!

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posted Friday, 26 October 2007

 An entry for those planning on hitting Rouen with children (nothing of interest if not)...

I have tons of advice for videos and books to go along with our trip that I hope to pull out the titles and share, but before I forget...We just watched disc two of The Impressionists: The Other French Revolution...both were wonderful...but this disc actually discusses how Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral over and over again...in blues, grays, pinks etc... It then showed a large collection of the different  Monet paintings back to back of the cathedral. This would be good to watch for anyone that heads that way and keep in mind it is only about an hour from his home it would be sad to miss if in the area and Monet has been introduced.  Having seen the light show on the cathedral this was really nice to just watch.  I am not certain if the light show is something that happens every year. According to my father (very well traveled) the French love doing such light shows which lead me to think it might be done in thefuture (and might have been done in the past) summers, I will update if I find an answer to this.

The children had seen two or three of these cathedral paintings here in Raleigh and a good six or so in Paris...but this video showed them change on the screen before us much like the light show on the cathedral and it was a good way of seeing the true impression that was taken in by Monet.

While thoughts are on Rouen I also thought I would share one of the Authors who I have really enjoyed using to supplement school work here... We discovered Diane Stanley when studying Michelangelo, I really enjoyed her book the best out of all that we read about him. It was good to teach with, the illustrations were great in that they had pictures but they also used his actual work within the illustrations.  When I went to find a book on Joan of Arc (once home and having been where she was burned at the stake and held prisoner) I was thrilled to see that Diane Stanley had done a book on her too...  http://www.dianestanley.com/Books/Biographies/Biographies.htm