Art Study Archives - Page 2 of 3

Summer Unschooling

June 5, 2013Tracy

We’ve got a tradition at our house that is now 3 years in the making. Summer school is absolutely the highlight of the year. All of us can hardly wait to close the textbooks and start summer.

I started summer school at the end of Oldest’s K4 year for a few different reasons. First, we love the structure that school brings to our day. Too much unstructured play breeds chaos and bickering at my house. We’re a family that loves a routine and a regular schedule. Second, I didn’t want to spend three months forgetting what we’d just spent months to learn. I wanted something to hold it all in their little heads and to keep it growing.

Thus, summer school was born, but not an endless rhythm of the same lessons: even we need a break. Summer school is our time for nature walks, nature journals, and nature study; science and discovery; messy art and picture studies; classical music, water parties, and mud pie bakeries. It’s not at all “school” in the traditional sense. It’s not even school in the classical sense. It’s more a mixture of Charlotte Mason and unschooling, nurturing a fascination for the beauty of creation.

And our summer studies have been some of our most memorable. Middlest, who was 2 when we had our first “summer school,” loves Handel’s water music and often asks when we will have another water party. Both of the kids light up when they see a waterlily painting; it’s Monet! And the nature journals are close-companions all summer long, including on vacation trips.

So what’s on the agenda for this summer?

Mozart (some read-aloud books and a playlist on my Naxos app for my ipod)
Artistic Pursuits K-3 book 1 (snagged one on Ebay) and lots of chalk art!
Lady Treble and the Seven Notes, as well as some recorder lessons
trees and plants study (thanks to a subscriber freebie from NotebookingPages.com and My Nature Journal)

Let’s break out the swimming pool and turn up the Mozart. It’s time for summer!

A “Trip” to the Beach with Art

May 22, 2013Tracy

I’m loving chalk pastel art and the free tutorials over at Hodgepodge. We’re new to the scene, just dusting our fingers with it, but already in love.

Our latest project was a beach scene, a perfect beginner lesson. The tutorial is very step-by-step, and the results are impressive.

So is the mess, but my little helpers have been very good about wiping up after the lesson.

I wanted to walk you through some of my reservations about using chalk pastels, just in case someone else out there is hesitant to take the plunge.

First, purchasing art supplies—real art supplies, not just crayola and elmer’s—made me a little skeptical. I mean, my kids are 6 and 4. It’s hard to justify the REAL stuff. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Chalk pastels and some newsprint paper were relatively inexpensive, definitely no more than the crayola/elmer category.

Then, there was the issue of taking care of the REAL stuff. I have to be honest, knowing the state of most of our crayons, I was very hesitant about REAL chalk. The kids did excellent during our first lesson; of course, I was harping at their elbows about being gentle. But our most recent lesson did in a number of our brand new chalks. Which is when I discovered that what I feared really wasn’t all that bad. The chalks broke, the earth kept rotating, and we all moved on.

Time was another factor. If dragging it out and cleaning it up took too much time, it just wasn’t going to happen very often around here. So I timed this last lesson, start to finish, to know just how long it took. To my utter surprise, it took almost exactly 20 minutes from donning the plastic GLAD bag aprons to wiping up the last specks of dust. Even I can do a 20 minute (including clean-up) art lesson.

Another question I had was wondering if my kids would be capable of this kind of art. And I’ve discovered what everyone keeps blogging about, that this art medium really is perfect for little ones because it is so forgiving. The kids have a great time with it. Oldest has a precise project that turns out very closely to the original we are following, and Middlest has lots of freedom to create. And I’ll admit, I’m having a blast, too.

Beach by 6 year old — Beach by my meticulous 6 year old

I am so glad I took the plunge into chalk pastel art. It’s going to be a great summer.

Making a Mess with Art

May 1, 2013Tracy2 Comments

As our “school-year” schedule eases up, our “summer-school” schedule begins here—a mix of art and music and nature study. This will be our third summer of this routine, and it’s amazing how quickly this has become a tradition. As soon as the weather starts warming and the trees begin to bloom, our fingers get the itch for messy art.

So we kicked off the season the other day with some chalk pastels. I am a hard-core art wanna-be. I would love to be adept at painting and chalking and drawing and the like. In reality, my work rarely turns out much better than the kids. But we love it.

I’ve perused the chalk tutorials at Hodgepodge for awhile, too nervous to jump in. But finally, I bought a set of pastels and took the plunge. We did the “To the Woods” tutorial as our first study. The kids did really well, and absolutely loved it. I had prepped them in advance. You see, my Oldest is a little OCD when it comes to getting his hands dirty. I wanted to be sure he knew exactly what he was in for. He had so much fun that in the end it didn’t bother him too much to get dirty, especially with a wipe nearby.

6 year old's masterpiece — 6 year old’s masterpiece

4 year old's masterpiece — 4 year old’s masterpiece

Middlest didn’t mind the mess in the least. She got right down to it. And you should have seen her eyes light up when I mentioned that we were turning the chalk on it’s side to color parts of our picture. This is her favorite way to color, and I can’t stand a square crayon so I rarely let her partake in this treat. They both had so much fun with the project that they decided to add some flowers to their path, just wanting to try other colors and prolong the lesson.

Littlest's masterpiece and introduction to crayons — Littlest’s masterpiece and introduction to crayons

Even Littlest got in on the art time. With Mozart playing on my Naxos app on my ipod, we all got our fingers dirty in our first summer lesson of the season. And it felt, oh-so-good!

Watercolor Water lilies

July 30, 2012Tracy

Continuing our study on Monet, we absolutely had to do something with water lilies. I’ve been brainstorming all summer and slowly the project came together in my head. Finally, I was ready, and on a warm summer day we tackled our watercolor water lily project.

First, we did a picture study from an online gallery. We talked about what the kids saw in the picture and what colors Monet used. We talked about our favorite parts of the picture, and then I showed them a photo of real water lilies. We talked about why Monet’s waterlilies looked blue and pink and purple instead of just green, and we discussed how light can change how we see colors.

Next, I had them go to the window and look out at our pond. What color was the water—not “what color is water supposed to be” but “what colors do you see?” Brown, green, blue, and white were the answers. We looked at Monet’s painting once more, at the colors that we saw in his “impression” of the water lilies. Then, we were ready for our project.

For the first step, I had them draw the lily pads and lily flowers in crayons. I encouraged them to layer their colors, as Monet had done, and to use many different colors. I also encouraged them to press hard with their crayons so that we got a good layer of wax on the paper. Once our lilies were ready, we headed outside for the actual painting.

Purple, blue, and green were the watercolors they could choose from. I helped get paint on the brushes and rinsed the brushes when a new color was needed; they did all the painting. And it was so cool to see our Monet paintings take shape.

Claude Monet

It was a very imprecise project; those are the kind of projects that Middlest really flourishes at. Oldest struggles with imprecision. He kept wanting to painstakingly paint around each lily pad, even after I assured him that the paint wouldn’t cover them. Eventually, he relaxed a little and let the brush sweep a little more freely. Middlest swept her brushes across wildly, mixing and layering colors and having a fabulous time creating.

The end result? A fun summer memory and an age-appropriate fine art project that really brought Monet to light!

Notebooking Fine Art

July 17, 2012Tracy2 Comments

I’ve been adding some lapbooking elements to our notebooking pages. It was exciting to see how much it spiced up just a plain piece of cardstock.

The main elements are from Confessions of a Homeschooler’s artist study, but I also added my own element from Homeschool Share’s free editable lapbooking templates (subscribe to their blog and get the templates for FREE!). I’ve mentioned how much I liked the “how to spot” information in the book Monet and the Impressionists for kids. So, I took the information from “how to spot a Monet” and “how to spot a Renoir” and typed it into this lapbooking template.

Oldest helped cut, Middlest helped paste, and they both had a blast working the artist puzzles.

I was thrilled to see how much my son remembered from last year’s Van Gogh study, even remembering the names to some of the art pieces, like the Potato Eaters. They especially enjoyed that piece, and I think both of them will forever remember Van Gogh and his “potato eaters.” For one, it’s such a great piece of art to bring up at the dinner table when someone complains about eating potatoes.

Monets and magazines

June 25, 2012Tracy3 Comments

For our Monet study this summer, I’m morphing two different resources: a free artist study download and the library book Monet and the Impressionists for kids. I loved this book for our Renoir study and could hardly wait to check it out for our Monet study, not just for the great biographical and art era information but also for the fun project ideas.

Though the text is a little above my kids’ attention spans, I love looking through the pictures with them and reading snippets from the longer story. Key facts and events about the artist, anecdotes that I think they will connect with and enjoy, as well as important art information is what I’m looking for. I also love that for each artist there is a box of “what to look for” that shares characteristics of the artist’s paintings. How do you spot a Monet? Look for light, water, gardens and waterlilies, and his wife and son who often show up in his paintings.

One of the project ideas suggested in this book was to choose a magazine picture of a landscape and paint over the picture, emphasizing the different shades of color more than the objects within the picture itself. It sounded like the perfect project for the kiddos, so I searched my old Better Homes and Gardens issues for just the right picture and then made a color copy so that both kids would have the same picture (for my own sanity).

Next, the kids donned their plastic garbage bag art aprons (I tear holes for the head and arms), and I prepared their paint palettes. We used some acrylic paints and some poster paints—the ones I had on hand (which meant that the flowers were not colored the exact shade of the photo). I did have to mix a few paints to get the right shades of green and yellow, and had I not run out of white paint, we probably could have matched the flower colors more closely.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the kids did with the project, including Middlest. We talked through what colors to use where and used one color at a time before moving to the next color. I also had to instruct them to dab the paint onto the picture rather than sweep their brushes back and forth.

Three year old's Monet — my three-year-old’s finished project

Five year old's project — my five-year-old’s finished project

The results were impressive Monet-style art pieces!

Back to Renoir

April 24, 2012Tracy1 Comment

It’s been awhile since I’ve pulled out our art study. I have Renoir art flashing on my laptop all the time as a screensaver, so it’s a constant reminder to the kids of what we haven’t been doing.

My son, who absolutely loves when we color these masterpieces, has been bringing up Renoir’s absence rather frequently; and it finally occurred to me that it would be the perfect “quiet time” activity for him. I pulled out the coloring page and colored pencils for him, printed off a copy of the art original, and walked off.

Renoir Young Girls at the Piano — Young Girls at the Piano

Folks, he blissfully colored on this page for two whole hours! And the results of his labor blew me away. He mixed his colors meticulously to match as closely as he could to the original, and even when it wasn’t the perfect match, it was an outstanding job identifying the different shades of color.

Though it took us forever to get to it, this was the last Renoir piece I had scheduled for us to color. And as for biography information, I found the best book at the library. (We read it late in February, but with the arrival of the baby I hadn’t posted about it yet.) Not only did it have great kid-friendly information about the artist, but it also explained Impressionism very well and had fun pointers about what aspects characterized an artist’s work. For instance, Renoir loved to paint people having a good time and his people were typically painted with very fair, cream-colored skin and rosy cheeks.