A haze on the far horizon,

The infinite, tender sky,

The rich, ripe tint of the cornfields,

And the wild geese sailing high --

And all over upland and lowland

The charm of the goldenrod--

Some of us call it autumn,

And others call it God.

(taken from "Each in His Own Tongue", by William Herbert Carruth)

Today we completed our art project for Autumn using the book Nature's Paintbox, by P. Thomas.  The medium they chose in the book is oil paints, however we chose to use tempera paints instead.  I also tied this lesson in with the above amazing poem.

We first read the Autumn pages from Nature's Paintbox, discussing all the vivid, rich and warm colors the artist used.

Then we read the poem (at the top of the entry) several times, talking about it's meaning.  We then discussed a list of colors that would be used in painting a picture to go with this poem.

Then we set about making our visions of Autumn!

Hannah

Mom

And of course the lesson wouldn't be complete without a little Antonio Vivaldi, The Four Seasons - Autumn, playing in the background!  This lesson also ties in very nicely to those beautiful, crisp Autumn nature walks, full of warm vibrant colors and feelings.  Each time we have been outside for our nature time lately, we have taken notice of these feelings and colors all around us.

Links to the previous Nature's Paintbox lessons we have done:

Nature's Paintbox - Spring

Nature's Paintbox - Summer

 Red Canna, by Georgia O'Keeffe

This past week, Hannah and I came up with a creative way to do picture study and also get in a little creative writing at the same time.  You know how I love to combine lessons, right?!!

I handed Hannah a few books featuring artwork by Georgia O'Keeffe, our featured artist this month, and had her look through them in another room.  Then she secretely picked out her favorite painting, she chose Red Canna as you see above.  However, she kept this a secret from me.  I then told her to independently study her chosen artwork for several minutes and write up a short, but vivid description of the painting.  And Mom was going to have to guess which one was her favorite just from her description.  Here is what she wrote up for me:

"The colors were so wonderfully put together.  Beautiful purples and red were so wonderfully put in a burst of color.  Waves pour out with color.  Splashing on a canvas is a flower with grace and beauty.  Oils shine red, orange, yellow, white and purples."

Then she handed me her description and the book from which she chose it.  Her description was so beautifully written and very accurate, I was able to find her favorite painting in just a few minutes!  And I quickly agreed with her that Ms. O'Keeffe's Red Canna painting is truly breaktaking in beauty.

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

Black and Purple Petunias, by Georgia O'Keeffe

I really love it when I can combine lessons!  And yesterday I was able to combine many lessons into one fantastic project!  For this year, I have our Art and Music lessons scheduled on Wednesdays.  We do not try to accomplish a great amount of other subjects this day, because I wanted this day to mostly focus on this.  Because the truth is that Art projects usually take a larger amount of time, but they are so worth it!

I'm going to attempt to walk you step-by-step through what we did:

1) Read a Book:  Through Georgia's Eyes, by Rachel Rodriquez

- This is truly a great living book on the life of Georgia O'Keefe!  It was our favorite that we checked out at the library.

2) Discussed Ms. O'Keeffe's Style of Painting Flowers.

- I showed them several examples of Georgia's flower paintings.  We discussed how she saw great beauty in flowers and she painted them big, close-up, and colorful in hopes that other people could see them the way she would!  Isn't that beautiful?  I want others to see them that way as well!

3)  Nature Walk

- Took a nature walk focused on looking at the details of wildflowers.  Each of the children picked their favorite flower, which they would be using for an art project.  Hannah and Alex both picked Chicory, I picked Spotted Touch-Me-Not, and Gabby picked a Robin's Plantain.

Also while we were on our nature walk, using super macro on the camera, the kids and I tried our hand at taking wildflower photos as close up as possible, just like Georgia would have liked it! After uploading the photos on our computer, we cropped them in even closer!  Can you see the beauty?

Chicory

Queen Anne's Lace

Black-Eyed Susan 

After returning inside and placing our picked flowers in some water vases, I moved onto the next step.

4) Read the Summer Section of Nature's Paintbox, by Patricia Thomas

- We've been working our way through the seasons in the above book.  Our Spring study can be found HERE.  For Summer, the illustrations are done in watercolors, my personal favorite art medium.  So, we used watercolors to do our art project!

5) Listen to The Four Seasons - Summer, Masters of Classical Music - Antonio Vivaldi

- I put this CD on to listen to while completing our Art project - specifically on The Four Seasons - Summer suite.  I reminded the kids about the last time we listened to Vivaldi and about The Four Seasons suites.  And like the last time we listened to it, we discussed the music and how it sounded like the season.

6) Complete Art Project:  Georgia O'Keeffe Watercolor Flowers

- The children used their selection of wildflower to paint a watercolor picture, George O'Keeffe style.  I gleaned this art idea from this book:  Discovering Great Artsts, by MaryAnn Kohl.

The two older children used Reeve's brand watercolors, it's an excellent quality paint for the price, and Loew-Cornell brand artist brushes.  For the toddler, Crayola watercolors and brush worked just fine! ;)

Alex is my art scoffer, so sometimes I can expect refusal from him, but he gave this project a try!  However, he did not like working with the watercolors and became very frustrated and discouraged with his work.  He was about to quit and I asked him if he'd like to try a different medium.  He chose good old-fashioned crayons.  And he ended up very pleased with his project!  And he got the point - he drew a smaller Chicory in the background and a larger one in the front to get your attention - Georgia style.

Hannah also did a great job with her Chicory.

And, of course, I couldn't refuse trying my hand at it!

Spotted Touch-Me-Not

Gabby, well, she did her painting "toddler-style" and only painted for about 3 minutes!

We used our final projects as a fantastic addition to our nature journals!!

One of my great blogging friends, Kim, recently asked me a question in relation to art projects/study.  Because I thought it might be helpful to others, and with her permission, I'm posting our email conversation about it here.  The following was her question:

I love all the art things you guys do. I don't have watercolors or oils, just regular old crayons and colored pencils. I'd like to begin doing some of these things, but how to start? Thats the question. Two of my kids tend to be really quick about their drawings, maybe they need some more UMPH, like what watercolors would do. I'm not sure.

Today we did a wonderful art project.  We used the book Nature's Paintbox, by Patricia Thomas and Illus. by Craig Orback, which I highly recommend, to begin a series of seasonal art projects.

Nature's Paintbox is a beautifully illustrated book which takes you on a journey through each of the four seasons using lovely verse.  And for each season a different art medium is featured in the artwork (winter-pen and ink; spring-oil pastels; summer-watercolors; autumn-oil paints).

So today we focused on oil pastels for spring!  At the end of the book you are given a detailed description on how each of the mediums are used to create the artwork.  For spring, Mr. Orback mainly used oil pastels, but he also used a watercolor wash just for a toning effect and pastel pencils for detail work. 

After reading the book, we set about to create our masterpieces!  We started with lightly sketching our drawings and then went over them with colored pencils (we did not have pastel pencils and regular ones worked pretty good too).

Next, we filled in with the oil pastels and did a very light watercolor wash for the blue skies.  We had not worked with oil pastels in a very long time, it was neat to get to work with them again.  And we were very happy with our final products!  And what was even more fun was that we had friends over today to do the project with us!  Here is everyone's work:

Hannah

Grace

Della

Mom

Our intention is to loosely focus on oil pastels as an art medium through the spring season, perhaps trying other projects that we find which involve using pastels.  And then move on through the seasons doing the same with the rest of the mediums.

After doing the project today, I was reminded after reading Amanda's post at Hearts and Trees about Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.  This would be a lovely complement to this project to listen to while we work.  So I plan on checking out the Mike Venezia, Igor Stravinsky book and a CD from our library before we do our next spring pastel project.  Or also, Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons would also be a wonderful complement for each season and project!

We got together today with my good friend Jennifer and her children to do Art and Music Friday.  Jennifer first taught the kids a lesson on Monet.

These were a few of her favorite books that she used:

Claude Monet - Sunshine and Water Lilies

Monet and the Impressionists for Kids

The Magical Garden of Claude Monet

Then I gave them a quick lesson and review on Antonio Vivaldi and we put on a CD to listen to while the kids completed their paintings.

Masters of Classical Music - Vivaldi

AND, of course the Mom's had to have fun too (mine and Jennifers)!

We've been trying to make a habit of keeping Fridays as our music and art focus day.  So today, we did a great and really fun art project called Watercolor Collage we found at Amanda's blog, Hearts and Trees.  It's always great when I can find a way to combine the two, so prior to doing the art project we listened to Vivaldi's Four Seasons Movement for Spring.  Before they listened, we talked about why it was called spring, and I discussed with them that while they were listening to think up some images of springtime.  You can listen to this beautiful music on the widget in my side bar.

After listening, we discussed some the images we all had.  Then we used Amanda's project to put our springtime images into artwork!

Alex started out working with us, but after the painting portion, we lost his attention.  He plans to finish his later;)  But Hannah and I had so much fun finishing ours and we were really impressed with the final products!

Hannah's "Lawnmowing in Spring" (isn't this awesome!)

Mom's "Springtime Delight for Hummingbird"

Both of us used rubbing alcohol on some of our colors and salt on others.  Hannah used alcohol on her background, and I used it on the hummingbird.  Hannah used salt on the grass and bush, and I used it on my background.  This project was truly so much fun, give it a try!

Thanks Amanda for giving us our art and music idea for the week!