His Mercy Is New...

Nov. 14, 2007

Warm Colors

Today for an art lesson we learned about warm and cool colors. I started off by asking the girls to tell me what colors they thought of when they thought of FIRE. They named yellow, orange, red and brown. Well, those are WARM colors. Now, what colors do you think of when you think of winter, water, snow? Blues, greens, etc. So that was our introduction to warm and cool colors.

Then we found all the WARM colors we could find out of our crayon box and our colored pencil box. All the different shades of red, yellow, orange, brown, etc. We used this color wheel found on homeschool share (under the unit for Goody O'Grumpity) to show the different colors that are warm.

And finally, I let them PAINT! Why does this excite them so? I only gave them warm colors to paint with today. They all had fun painting!

Hannah's warm-colored rainbow!

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Artist and Composer Studies

Aug. 14, 2007

Paintings that Dance

Posted in Artist and Composer Studies

We are finishing up our study on Edgar Degas and we read 2 really neat books about him today. I thought I would share the titles here in case anyone wants to learn about this artist in the future.

The first book is called Edgar Degas - Paintings that Dance by Kristen Cole and Maryann Cocca-Leffler. This is a book that is about a little girl who has to write a report on an artist, this book is her report. It shows lots of neat things that would be interesting to children, as well as a lot of Edgar Degas's sketches, photographs and paintings. We also learned in this book that Degas enjoyed painting horses as well as ballerinas! This was a new fact for us!

The next book is called Bijou, Bonbon & Beau - The Kittens Who Danced for Degas by Joan Sweeney. This is a fictional book, but based on a true account from Degas's life. It is about a few kittens that come to live in the ballet theater where Degas goes to paint. The kittens interrupt a ballet performance. We see lots of pretty illustrations in this book and at the end we learn about times that Degas painted in the ballet theaters and studios.

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Artist and Composer Studies

Jul. 24, 2007

Our Picture/Artist study

Posted in Artist and Composer Studies

I have been talking to several people about this recently and decided I should put this on my blog...because it is one of my favorite things we are doing this year! I also want to add links for you, because I have gotten some great resources on this subject. Once again, I got this wonderful idea (that I'm about to share) from the blog, Higher Up and Further In...if you haven't checked it out by now, you should!

A few months ago, I chose maybe 6 artists that I wanted to cover with the girls this year. We are doing 1 artist every 6-8 weeks...no schedule set in stone, it's flexible and simple, just the way I like it! For every artist I chose, I picked 6 of their paintings that we would look at. I chose the paintings from this site:

http://cgfa.dotsrc.org/fineart.htm

This is a wonderful site where you can look up the artist according to their last name, alphabetical order, and view a lot of their famous pieces. So, I chose 6 pieces per artist from this site.

Then, I saved them all onto my computer in my pictures file. And, finally, I had them all printed off at walgreens that very night on 4x6's. (gotta love technology today!)

I bought the girls each a little album just for their pictures, just the little albums that hold 4x6's with a few little lines for a description.

Each week I give them a new picture to add to their album. Hannah has been writing the artist and the title of the painting beside each one. Each week we discuss the painting and review past week's paintings. I ask who painted it, what they like about it, sometimes at random times I will ask them about a painting. Do you remember this one? What does it look like? What is your favorite painting?

At this stage in the game we are going for EXPOSURE...plain and simple! My girls are learning some artists names, seeing their style, learning what they like and dislike and it could not be more simple on my part to plan and execute!

I also at some point during those 2 months with 1 artist check out a few kid friendly books from the library on that artist, so we learn a little bit more about his/her life.

Finally, I print off their picture from this site, and we add it to our timeline:

http://www.montessorimaterials.org/art/artists.pdf

This site is really a wonderful resource, because they are just the right size for most timelines! I cut it out and paste it on an index card and VOILA, there you have it!

So far we have learned about Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas...and I am learning just as much as they are! I love it!

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Artist and Composer Studies

May. 6, 2007

More Artist Study!

Posted in Artist and Composer Studies

I'm so excited! As you have read previously, I have been reading and reading Charlotte Mason stuff like crazy the past few weeks. I had started doing the picture study about 1-2 months ago by hanging some of Monet's artwork with our calendar. We have talked about it and then one day we read about Monet.

Now I have found another idea to add even more to our picture study! I found this idea on Higher Up and Farther In's blog (link to left.)

I looked on this site and chose Mary Cassatt to be our first artist. Here is the link to some of her artwork.

http://cgfa.dotsrc.org/cassatt/index.html

Then, I copied each one of the 6 pictures we are going to study into my pictures file on my computer. And, I loaded them onto walgreens.com and ordered 4x6's of each of them...1 for each girl. Then, we will put them into our own little Artist album and write the artist and title on each page. I think the girls are really going to enjoy having their OWN copy of the artwork, to look at, to touch, to think about. As we move forward, they will have a little photo album with all the artwork we have studied! What fun!

Basically, what we will do is introduce the picture at the beginning of the week. I will give it to the girls, tell them the name of the artist and the name of the artwork. I will allow them to just look quietly at the picture for a few moments, without me talking about it, giving my opinion of it or describing it for them. I will remind them to do this each day. Probably the 2nd day I will ask them to describe the picture for me - while looking at it! To build language and descriptive words. Maybe by the end of the week we will close our little book and see how much they can remember about the painting. NOTHING formal, NOTHING difficult. That is one of my favorite things about Charlotte Mason - simplicity and gentleness! Yet what wonderful exposure and depth the things the children are seeing and learning about!

One other idea she had on Higher Up and Further In is to put the artwork of the week as your background on your computer, so that your children can see it in another place...so I now have "Sisters" by Mary Cassatt on our computer. I love this picture and thought it would be sweet to start with such an appropriate sweet picture for my little "sisters."

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Artist and Composer Studies

Apr. 23, 2007

Our Day With Monet

Posted in Artist and Composer Studies

Today we took a "break" from the regular rowing routine (we don't NEED a break, but I found these books from the library and HAD to use them!) We took a little time today to learn a little bit more about Claude Monet and his paintings. I had bought some postcard sized art pieces a few months back and Monet was the first artist that I used...I have hung up a few of his paintings on a bulletin board and just casually mention them to the girls. (A lot of what I've done is a Charlotte Mason idea.) I will ask them to describe the paintings, what they like about them, who painted them, etc. So, today we read a little bit more about the artist whose paintings we've been looking at for awhile. 2 books we read and really enjoyed are: