art study Archives - Page 2 of 2

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!

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!

Summer School Schedule

June 5, 2012Tracy2 Comments

I’ve been playing around with our schedule over the last several days, and I think I finally have our summer the way I want it. So, here’s what we are up to and how we are fitting it in (while still managing to have lots of play time and pool time).

First, I’m planning on a four day school week, saving the fifth day for field trips and bigger projects. Then, I split up our math and phonics similar to a block schedule. In other words, we don’t do both everyday but rather do each every other day. Day 1: Math; Day 2: LA; Day 3: Math; Day 4: LA. This way, we get two lessons of each every week—good enough to maintain what we’ve learned, not so much that we don’t get a summer.

Now, for all of the fun I have planned!

Science/Nature Study

Geography (continuing with North and South America)

Art and Art Appreciation: Monet (and lots of drawing)

Music Appreciation: Bach (it’s a long story for another post)

Again, I wanted enough to cover the topic and give us an activity for each day without robbing us of the summer-time memories. So, we will do one of these subjects each day: four subjects for four days.

Thus, our schedule comes down to this.

Monday: field trip/project day

Tuesday: Math and Nature Study

Wednesday: LA and Music

Thursday: Math and Art

Friday: LA and Geography

Let the good times roll!

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.

Linking to

Appreciating Renoir

October 12, 2011Tracy

We’ve been working on our second piece of art from Renoir, Still Life with a Bouquet. And my little artists have been meticulously creating their own rendition.

I was thrilled with the little one’s project this time. In my last post on art, I mentioned how she likes to express her creativity. But this time, she really got into the project. I worked with her a good deal, helping to point out the colors. And the fact that she had new coloring pencils probably helped.

Still Life2 — With the little one, my priority is just to get her to match the colors with the original.

The challenge with my son right now is getting him to relax when he colors. He doesn’t think he has colored a page unless it is covered with the richest, waxiest color his crayon can produce. And he attempts this same strategy with his coloring pencils. Of course, it kills his hand muscles. To combat that, we’ve been discussing the light and dark areas in the picture, and I’ve been showing him how to hold his pencil to change the intensity of his color.