Book Review: Michelangelo for Kids: His Life and Ideas, with 21 Activities (For Kids series)

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book to review. However, all opinions are my own. 

I love art. I am not an artist, but my mom is. she taught us to have a great love for the arts, no matter the medium. She has always been a big fan of Michelangelo because he did so much. When I was given the opportunity to review Michelangelo For Kids ($13.27 on Amazon), by Simonetta Carr, I knew it would be the perfect opportunity for some art lessons with my kids.

Michelangelo Buonarroti—known simply as Michelangelo—has been called the greatest artist who has ever lived. His impressive masterpieces astonished his contemporaries and remain some of today’s most famous artworks. Young readers will come to know Michelangelo the man as well as the artistic giant, following his life from his childhood in rural Italy to his emergence as a rather egotistical teenager to a humble and caring old man. They’ll learn that he did exhausting, back-breaking labor to create his art yet worked well, even with humor, with others in the stone quarry and in his workshop. Michelangelo for Kids offers an in-depth look at his life, ideas, and accomplishments, while providing a fascinating view of the Italian Renaissance and how it shaped and affected his work. 

Budding artists will come to appreciate Michelangelo’s techniques and understand exactly what made his work so great. Twenty-one creative, fun, hands-on activities illuminate Michelangelo’s various artistic mediums as well as the era in which he lived. Kids can: make homemade paint, learn the cross-hatching technique used by Michelangelo, make an antique statue, build a model fortification, compose a Renaissance-style poem, and much more. (From Amazon)

I thought this book would be a great experiment with my kids, but it has become so much more. My son is one of these (like me) that he can just learn something and know it after that. My daughter is more hands on, but I want them learning both ways because when they become adults they will have to learn things in different manners. Since this is Kindergarten for my oldest and 3k for my youngest, I thought experimenting with unit studies would be fun. I used this book for our unit study on Michelangelo and found that I didn't really need supplemental material, besides more pictures and videos to fill in. We are going through it and trying to do a different activity each week, but sometimes we do not get to it. It should work for the majority of the year and it encourages so much more than the love of art.

I love the layout, the illustrations, and the information. I even found myself being sucked right in and really looking forward to the activities.