Yesterday was another great day for us with Art and Music!  We started some new lessons created by Barb at Drawing with Children: Nature Journal Style.  Using the book, Drawing with Children, by Mona Brookes, she adapts the lessons to be used with Nature Study and journaling.  With this first lesson we got in an Art lesson, a Nature walk, and completed a Nature journal page.

We first completed the lesson from the book on the 5 Basic Elements of Shape:  The Dot Family, The Circle Family, the Straight Line Family, the Curved Line Family, and the Angle Line Family.  Then, equipped with what we had learned, we ventured outside to explore in Nature.  While we were on our walk we played one of the suggested visual games from the book.  I would point to items in Nature and ask the kids which elements of shape they could find in that item.  We analyzed so many different things such as:  trees, wildflowers, mushrooms, leaves, logs, insects, rocks, butterflies, birds, etc.  This was a great awareness activity!

After we had done this for awhile, we returned back inside to put the lesson into practice.  By following directions in the book, we all took our hand at drawing our favorite kind of bird to place in our Nature journals.

Hannah's American Goldfinch

Alex's Bird Chasing a Cicada

(evidently he had seen this earlier in the day!)

Mom's Indigo Bunting

While we completed the Nature journal page I talked for just a moment about the Oboe Woodwind instrument and showed them a photo of one, because we had never seen one up close, and played Antonio Vivaldi's Oboe Sonata for them to hear and thoroughly enjoyed the sound of the Oboe.

Here is a website with information about the Oboe, including a link to hear the sound:  Hear the Oboe