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This week I introduced Damien (age 2 years, 1 month old) to paintings by Vincent Van Gogh using this digital flash card video.

The video includes:

The Starry Night – 1889
Cafe Terrace at Night – 1888
Irises – 1889
The Starry Night Over the Rhone – 1888
Wheatfield with Crows – 1890
The Night Cafe – 1888
The Potato Eaters – 1885
The Yellow House – 1888
The Church at Auvers – 1890
The Red Vineyards Near Arles – 1888

Most of my flash card videos are very fast-paced, so that instead of studying the images the child simply absorbs them, effortlessly and enjoyably.

However, when deciding how I would introduce famous paintings, I decided to slow things down a bit, because with paintings, you really do want to study them, even if it is only for a few seconds at a time.

So as each painting comes up I named not only the name of the painting but also the medium that was used to paint it (oil on canvas, for all of them) as well as the year it was created.

This gave more time to look at the painting, while still avoiding a dead, anticipating silence of staring at a soundless screen while waiting for the next slide to emerge. It also created the bonus of teaching your child additional, interesting basic knowledge about the paintings.

The video is still relatively brief – only about a minute long for all ten paintings. But I think I found a happy balance here.

Enjoy! I can share printable flash cards tomorrow for those of you who prefer them.