Snow Art

Those of you who have ready mt sporadic posts here have likely seen some of the art work created by  my children. I probably feature my daughters work more because she simply creates more than my son. Today I'm featuring  another one of my daughters' works. This particular scene was inspired by Eric Carle's book Dream Snow. The story features a farmer preparing Christmas presents for his animals, piling them around an outdoor tree.

We didn't have the book this past season as our new library doesn't have it, but I guess it has made an impression on my daughter. (I believe it is also written more for the preschool set.)



Her picture is created with slick sticks from Crayola. These are somewhat chunky sticks that are a cross between crayons and oil pastels. The color goes on smooth and thick, yet they aren't messy on the hands due to their plastic case.

Theme Posters

My 12 year old daughter has always been very interested in drawing and art. In her spare time she is often drawing something. Within the last couple months she has started making theme posters. 

We have an assortment of how to draw books here at home and she often pages through them looking for an object to draw. Then she adds personality to the item and gives the poster a title. 

She has done a music poster with notes, a grand piano, and other music items, but unfortunately I do not have a photo. She gave it to her music teacher before I could get one.

I am linking up with Jennifer at a glimpse of our life.

Daughters' Art

Yesterday I posted my TOS review for Artistic pursuits. The book I reviewed was one of them from the K-3 collection. My daughter is older than that, but she enjoys art, so I really couldn't tell her she couldn't do the projects included.  However, I didn't want to give unrealistic expectations of the results to readers of my review. So I told her I would post pictures of her work inspired by the book in a separate post. Since the Virtual Refrigerator falls the day after I posted my review I thought it was the perfect opportunity to showcase her work.

These are a couple chenille stem sculptures she made from a lesson studying sculpture. Her sculptures area present and dragonfly.

The first lesson taught the artist to pay attention to things in their world and concluded with their painting a scene they knew with gouache paint.  The second lessons project focused on mixing paint colors and making a color wheel. This demonstrated how numerous colors can be made from just three colors.

Another lesson focused on Monet and how he saw things differently depending on the time of day and light. The students were then instructed to paint a series of pictures showing the same object or scene, but at different times or seasons.  Here she showed a tree in different seasons.

Thanks to Jennifer at A Glimpse of Our Life for hosting the Virtual Refrigerator.

Artistic Pursuits TOS Review

Artistic Pursuits
http://artisticpursuits.com/

Art Curriculum and Instruction Books for Preschool through High School
$42.95 per book

Art supplies for each book are also available in kit
Prices vary per kit



One of the subjects or activities which is often pushed to the side in our homeschool endeavors is art.My children enjoy it, but it just seems that it is the easiest subject to move off the schedule when we face a time crunch.Thus my children were thrilled when we had the opportunity to review a volume of Artistic Pursuits art curriculum.

We had the opportunity to use and review the Grade K-3 Book 3 Modern Painting and Sculpture.This volume focuses on Impressionist Artists, several other modern art movements and three dimensional art techniques. There are 32 two to three page lessons. Among the impressionists artists you'll find studies of Monet, Pissarro,Cassatt, Gauguin, Seurat, and Van Gogh.Modern art topics include cubism, Expressionism, and Abstract art as well as artists such as Calder and Mondrian. There are several lessons about current forms of artistic expression such as land art, sculpture and computer art.

Lessons in Artistic Pursuits contain one or two pages presenting an artist and talking about their style of art.One or more of the works is featured in full color and discussed.The artists are discussed in their historical and cultural contexts. Following this discussion there are several questions directed to the student which are designed to help them think about the picture they are seeing. The next page is a project for the student to do.All of these are hands on creative works.There are painting projects, sculpture projects, paper crafts, as well as other media such as soap.The painting projects teach various styles and techniques. Sculpture projects use materials such as pipe cleaners, foil, or clay.Several projects combine multiple materials.

While the majority of the book is written to the student, the parent or teacher will also find useful articles about teaching art and history and contemporary art.

Rounding out the book is an extensive bibliography and book/multimedia resource list.You will also find book suggestions throughout the main text.

Our experience with Artistic Pursuits

I am totally impressed with this Art curriculum. I love having all the information in one reference book.I could share information about the artist and then just flip the page and be ready for my children to create a piece of art.This way they can have art appreciation and a hands on experience with one coordinated resource. Also nice about Artistic Pursuits is the spiral binding and clear plastic cover.This allows the book to open and lay flat as well as protect the paper cover.

In addition to the books being written directly to the student in a conversational tone, another big plus for me was the ease of teacher preparation. All I needed to do was read through the 2-3 pages and gather the art supplies. I was able to read the text in no more than 10 minutes and gather all needed supplies in just a few minutes more than it took me to read. The gathering time would have been shortened if I could keep all our art supplies in one place.

Speaking of supplies, there is a fairly hefty list needed to complete all the projects in the book. While most of them are not expensive by themselves, if purchasing them all at the same time they could add up. However, you probably have some of them at home already.While you could just read the text of the book, the child would be missing out on a lot of the fun without the opportunity to make their own masterpieces.

Artistic Pursuits also encourages students to think about art in new ways, not just something hanging on a wall or sitting on a pedestal in a cold museum.Throughout the lessons the student is challenged to see things they encounter daily as art as well as the reality that not everyone likes every piece of art they encounter. While the child is taught to appreciate art and view it from different perspectives, they are also reminded in several lessons that art in a museum is not something they are allowed to touch.

The projects in the book are well thought out and very appropriate for the artist or concept taught.The majority of them could be used as gifts from the young artist to loved ones. As with any art endeavor the quality of the finished project depends on the skill of the artist as well as time and thought put into the project, but the ideas are high quality.

I also appreciate the mix of 2D and 3D artists and projects in the book. This helps teach or reinforce the idea that art is not just flat or drawing and painting.

My 7 year old son is thrilled with the book. He said his favorite part was all the ideas for things to make. While he is within the age range for this book he found the questions asking about things in the paintings to be easy and boring. He is looking forward to learning about more artists and trying his hand at more projects. The pictures featured here are some of his work from the books lessons.



My 10 year old daughter also used the book. While the text was way below her level I think she enjoyed hearing the art history and making the projects as well.I will feature her projects in a separate post as her age and abilities are beyond what would be expected of a student in the target age range.I had her do additional reading about the artists to round out the curriculum for her level.

One problem I experienced was not being able to find many of the resources sited at my library, even though they are a large suburban system.

After using this level of Artistic Pursuits I would not hesitate to purchase additional volumes of Artistic Pursuits if finances were not an issue.

Other TOS Crew members had the opportunity to review other volumes and levels of the Artistic Pursuits program.You can see what they had to say at the Crew Blog.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book to enable me to write this review. I have not been compensated in any other manner and all opinions expressed here are totally my own.

A Morning of Art with Michael Albert

You may not have heard of this Pop Artist or his unique style of art, cerealism, but it is definitely worth checking out.  One day last week my children and I had the opportunity to spend the morning with him in his artist workshop, learning all about his unique style of art.

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing all the items he has created and hearing the story behind many of them.  He definitely exhibits a unique perspective on our culture and lives through his work.  One thing which struck me was how much our culture has become commercialized and the made impact brands have on our daily lives.

 

This is one of Michael Alberts smaller works.  I love this!  I think it also applies to many other things we do, not just gluing art projects.   I think this will become a new phrase around my house.

His website has a listing of many engagements and workshops he has scheduled.   michaelalbert.com    Check it out.  If you ever have the opportunity to attend one of his workshops, DO IT.  If you have any interest in art you will be so glad you did.  Also if you have the chance to see a exhibition it is well worth it. But in the mean time check out his website as well as An Artists America. This is a book of many of his different works as well as the story of how he began doing this unique art.

DaVinci Study

DaVinci Tivia

Did you know Leonardo took the name of the town where he was born, Vinci, Italy as his last name?
He wrote many of his notes backwards, presumably so others couldn't decipher what he had written?
He also sketched many new inventions?

During April we spent some time studying the life and work of Leonardo DaVinci.  My son was particularly excited about this as his birthday is the same date as Leonardo's - April 15th. We worked on this project off and on for the whole month, not that it was long, but we also had other studies and materials to use.  Our study encompassed several aspects.

The books we used were:

• Getting to know the World's Great Artists  Leonardo Davinci    by Mike Venezia
• Leonardo DaVinci for Kids His Life and Ideas      by Janis Herbert
  
• Beautiful Dreamer   by Robert Byrd
• Leonardo da Vinci : Discover the World of Leonardo Through His Apprentice's Diary    by Steve Augarde 
• The Stolen Smile    by J. Patrick Lewis
• Lives of the Artists:  Masterpieces, Messes, and What the Neighbors Thought   by Kathleen Krull
• Discovering Great Artists   by MaryAnn Kohl 

The children made lapbooks.  These were from a set that someone else wrote to go with the Venezia book.  All I had to do were copy and cut.  I was thinking I had purchased the set from Currclick, but when I looked for it today I could not find it on their site.

They completed a Famous Artist Biography notebook page about Leonardo.  This included the dates he lived, where, names of some of his works, and general information about him.  I purchased the set of notebooking pages from Notebooking Pages.com, but I believe the free artist sample on the site is Leonardo DaVinci.

I also had the children write about the Mona Lisa.  I thought since this is such a well known piece, that it would be beneficial for them to know some of the facts as well as uncertainties behind its creation and history.  The border paper used for that writing is also from Notebooking Pages.com .





Leonardo DaVinci was also know for his detailed drawing of everyday objects as well as he painting.  So to help my children look at all the details of something I had them choose an object or two around the house that could be easily disassembled and draw all the parts.  I asked them to arrange their drawings in the order how the item would be put back together.

The top picture is my 10 year old daughters work.  She drew a Pepper Mill. The bottom picture was drawn by my 7 year old son and he featured a flashlight with the batteries.






We only did a very few of the many activities and projects it would be possible to do in a unit about Leonardo DaVinci.  However, I think it was enough so we could all learn something and not be overwhelmed or lose interest in the topic.  There are still plenty of activities related to Leonardo DaVinci which we can do when we reach that time in history.

Butterfly Life Cycle Project

Last summer and early fall we did a unit on insects. Both my children enjoy hands on projects of various kinds so we tried to incorporate several projects since we weren't also doing all of our normal subjects as well.  When my daughter found the idea for this project in Pack O Fun magazine she decided we needed to try it.

We made a few changes to personalize the project.  It was originally supposed to be a monarch lifecycle, but they wanted to make their butterflies more colorful, so they just made generic butterflies.  Yes, I realize the butterflies probably don't resemble any known species, but I am okay with that. The instructions called for polymer clay that required baking in an oven but I really didn't want to have to open windows for ventilation or turn on the oven when the temperatures were in the 90's.  So when I discovered a polymer clay which was air dry we decided to go with that.

They each had fun making all the little pieces out of clay and talking about how they would arrange them on the foam core board. Then they decided that white was too boring so they needed to pain their backgrounds. Finally after several days the pieces were all dry and the kiddos could arrange and glue their creations together. I made the labels using my word processing program on the computer.

Here are the final results:

Daughters' Butterfly Lifecycle

Sons' Butterfly Lifecycle

They both had a lot of fun making them and using polymer clay for the first time.  They were pleased with the way the plaques turned out and I was too. Now if I was just a little more prompt in getting pictures on the computer!