That Mona Lisa - she’s a minger

Emma Mahoney’s children cared little for great art until an imaginative DVD changed everything

March 31, 2007

It’s not every day that I plonk my children in front of the television with a smug, rather than guilty, smile. Having bought the new Now You Know About Artists DVD, however, I had good reason to feel pleased with myself. This children’s introduction to Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Gainsborough and Goya, has all the mother-friendly ingredients: education, silence and a 60-minute running time.

What I hadn’t expected was the DVD to be a hit, with my six-year-old son Michael requesting it daily, and his twin sister Millie organising a tea party to show it off to her classmates. Even my nine-year-old son Humphrey, usually suspicious of anything with an educational whiff, sat on the sofa arm and challenged me over the Mona Lisa’s beauty. (“I’m sorry Mum, but no way is she beautiful,” he gasped. Then, a little later, adding: “Maybe they had a different idea of beauty in those days.”) What the DVD proved was that a good well-told story, with some fine art thrown in, can beat whizzy animation any day. The techniques and lives of the chosen painters were extraordinary. We learnt that Leonardo (1452-1519), for example, used as a model for Judas in the Last Supper the roughest criminal he could find in prison. (Did you know that he was so slow at painting that The Last Supper took three years to finish, and he had completed only 30 works by his death at 67?) Goya (1746-1828), on the other hand, was far more prolific but suffered sudden deafness mid-career, which turned his joyful art (illustrated by the puppet painting El Pelele) into the dark Hallowe’en-style pictures of The Witches’ Sabbath and Two Old Women Eating from a Bowl.

As well as putting the art into the context of the painters’ lives, the DVD also explains a little about their styles. In the ten-minute short about Rembrandt (1603-69), we learn the basics of chiaroscuro and how the artist perfected the technique to use only black and white in such paintings as The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp. The goriness of the picture is chosen to appeal to children’s sense of the macabre, and my six-year-old boy loves the close-up of the dead man’s dissected arm. In Leonardo’s film, we learn that the artist used a fine brush made of a squirrel’s tail, thicker brushes from pigs’ hair, and the paint was made fresh daily out of oil, egg and chalk.

Brooke-Turner chose Van Gogh for her first film, and used her talented South African nanny Bronwyn Cousins as the illustrator. “We had a create-your-own calendar from the National Gallery, where you choose the paintings for the month, and we experimented with laminating the paintings as place-mats for my children to learn about at tea time.”

Van Gogh’s featured paintings Starry Night, Sunflowers, Vincent’s Bedroom in Arles, Self Portrait with Straw Hat and Dr Paul Gachet were all chosen by her two children Joe, 7, and Cecilia, 9. Brooke-Turner took advice from a child psychologist, Dr Emmeliek Boost, when commenting on madness, suicide and genius — all elements of Van Gogh’s story — and my own view is that the DVD succeeds because difficult emotions such as loneliness, frustration and anger are tackled within the context of the artists’ lives, strong feelings encountered daily in the playground.

For all the stress, there was a brief moment of respite, however. Searching for my nine-year-old, Humphrey, I found him sitting quietly on a bench transfixed before Monet’s Waterlilies. “What are you doing?” I asked. Without looking up, he answered dreamily: “I’m being absorbed.” The Mona Lisa may be unsightly, but Monet rocks, apparently.

Please click if you wish to see the article on Times Online.

Happy Histories

Imagine if the television didn’t turn your children into square-eyed monsters, but actually ignited a desire to learn. And imagine leaving them in front of the telly for an hour, and not feeling irresponsible.

February 27, 2010

I have discovered the NowYouKnowAbout series of DVDs, created by a mother-of-two, Clarissa Brooke-Turner, when her eight year-old daughter announced that the Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo DiCaprio.

There are three DVDs – Artists, Scientists and Explorers – each divided into five 10-minute animated cartoons.

My 7-year-old is now nagging me to go to the National Gallery. I recommend you to buy all three. Suitable for six-to 10-year-olds.

£12.99 for one or three for £31.99. (nowyouknowabout.com)

- Daisy Bridgewater

NowYouKnowAbout Scientists

DVD with 10-minute films showing the lives of famous scientists aimed at age 5+.

Nov, 2008

This DVD offers five short films giving some insight into the lives and discoveries of five scientists: Darwin, Newton, Pasteur, Galileo and Marie Curie. The film is cartoon-based, with some animation and a voice-over 'by' the scientist describing their investigations and conclusions. The language is suitable for upper key stage 1 and it could be very useful as an activity to promote thinking into scientific enquiry at the start of a new topic.

There are two particularly positive features of the DVD. The first is that each of the clips starts with the question 'What is a scientist?' which is then answered by: 'A scientist is someone who explores. A scientist is someone who considers. A scientist is someone who discovers'. I feel that this is valuable in terms of promoting children's consideration of themselves as scientists, and will go some way to encouraging them to engage with working in a scientific way, or at least realising that they can.

The other strength of this DVD is that it tackles the issues that scientists faced when developing ideas that contradicted established ideas. For example, 'Galileo' describes the difficulties he had when suggesting that it was the Sun, and not the Earth, which was at the centre of the universe. It is essential that, as well as promoting the doing of science, resources consider the other more controversial issues that may surround this. If used in this way, I feel that this DVD can start the process of critical thought and encourage analysis from an early age.

Although suggested for use with children of 5 upwards, younger children may struggle with some aspects of the DVD. With little animation and the content tackling some quite abstract concepts, it may be more suited for use with key stage 2 children. The short clips make this resource valuable as a starter, discussion point or focus for class work relating to science.

Leigh Hoath

KS2/3 science PGCE course leader

Bradford College University Centre

Win NowYouKnowAbout DVDs

Nov 13, 2009

If you're not sure what to give your grandchildren for Christmas this year, we suggest some DVDs from Now You Know About. They teach children about famous artists, explorers and scientists in an entertaining and colourful way and the series was inspired by Richard Ingrams' piece in The Oldie some years ago when he complained about the poor standard of children's general knowledge.

Fun facts

Nov 21, 2009

Why did Christopher Columbus turn nasty? Finding the answer to quirky questions like this one, will soon get your children wanting to know more about history’s great explorers.

The newly-released DVD NowYouKnowAbout Explorers is an entertaining and engaging introduction to five of the world’s great explorers and is the latest in a series which has already featured great world artists and scientists.

In 50 minutes’ playing time, children aged 6-10 years get a chance to find out more about Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Captain Cook and the Chinese admiral Zheng He through short, humorous films that use lively first-person narrative combined with colourful, appealing visuals.

Each explorer’s life story is told in a 10-minute film and is backed up with downloadable colouring pages online.

The series was borne out of founder Clarissa Brooke-Turner’s realisation that her two children, then six and eight, could name every Disney character but didn’t know Van Gogh from Leonardo.

In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two

Nov 2009

NowYouKnowAbout Explorers is the latest in a series of DVDs which has already featured great world artists and scientists. Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan and others get 10 minutes each. Fun cartoons, a refreshingly unannoying narrator, and my kids were hooked. How smug was I feeling when my daughter's playdate's mum came to pick her up? Telly vegging has never looked so good!

Last-Minute gifts

Dec 16, 2009

E is for educating and entertaining. If your kids can name Disney characters but struggle on the world’s greatest explorers check out the Now You Know range of DVDs. Aimed at 6-10 year-olds there’s one for explorers, artists and inventors. £12.99 each from www.nowyouknowabout.com.

38 great giveaways!

March 2010

Learning about famous people is great fun with NowYouKnowAbout Explorers DVDs (£12.99 from www.nowyouknowabout.com) - colourful, 10-minute stories about Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Cook and Zheng He. Aimed at five to 10-year-olds, they make a great alternative to cartoons. Look out for the artists and scientists DVDs in the same series. And for every DVD purchased, the company will give away another to an underprivileged child as part of its OneForOne campaign.