Bases Loaded with One on Deck

Lots and Lots of Dots

I must confess (and I know I'm not alone here) that I probably own way too many books.  I also know that I'm not alone in the fact that there are certain types of books/authors that I tend to buy more often than others.  Arts and Crafts fits in that area for me.  I'm neither artsy nor crafty by nature, so I suppose I justify purchases by convincing myself that I need all the help I can get. 

Ever hear of MaryAnn F. Kohl?  I'm slightly addicted to her right now, have been for years actually. It all started with Discovering Great Artists.  Haven't used it as much as I hoped, and with all the projects I still had left to do, I really had no business buying Great American Artists, but it was in color (the other was not) and I just had to have it.  Haven't really used that one as much as I had hoped either, so it was with a bit hesitation that I decided to purchase Storybook Art.  I really wanted something I could do especially with James. I actually checked this one out from the library first just to make sure, and believe it or not his first project is almost complete.  

We chose the book Ten Black Dots. It seemed like a simple enough project that James could easily come up with ideas for.  Here are some sample pages from his book:

  

  

James used Draw Write Now to make the train and the guy kneeling in front of the snow balls. And I know I'm a bit biased here, but I think they came out pretty darn swell. 

Hours of Fun!

The Book:

The Builders:

The Hanger:

The Pilots:

The Testing Field:

The Crash Site:

A costly kiss indeed!

I must admit that our house is very lacking in decor.  A lot of our rooms still need paint on the walls, let alone something to adorn them.    So imagine my joy this morning when I found out my "white walls" might be the most valuable part of the entire house.  I mean, if Cy Twombly can paint an all white picture worth $2.8 million (before a fan decided to kiss it) then my entryway alone is worth billions! 

The full details of the story are here.  I'm off to Sherman Williams to stock up on their best white paint. 

Autumn Treehouse

Keeping with our theme of fall, this is our "deceptive" picture study for the day.  This is "Tree House in Autumn" by Rob Gonsalves. 

Lots and Lots of Dots

A few weeks ago, when I posted about our art plans for the year, I mentioned we still needed to do our pointillism picture from the Georges Seurat study we did in spring.  We had a couple of days off last week, so we decided it would be a good time to "get to the point" of this style of painting.

If you are not familiar with pointillism, it is the process of making small dots or tiny, short brush strokes when painting a picture.  To the right there is an example of Mr. Seurat's work, "The Lighthouse at Honfleur".  Now, we don't have quite the same amount of artistic skill, and the pictures we produced might not be as beautiful, and certainly aren't worthy of a place in any museum other than the "Bases Loaded Refrigerator of Art", but I think all would agree that for the most part we did quite well.

First we'll display the masterpiece of our youngest artist, James.  I don't think he quite got the "point" of pointillism, but tis' beautiful none-the-less:

Next I'll show you John's and Michael's.  I must admit they were very excited about the project at first, and had grand plans for their pictures, until they realized how long and tedious the pointillism process can be.  Both were very quick to ask, "Can't we just paint with regular strokes like we normally do?"  I made the mistake of saying yes, but only after they finished their pointillism pictures.  They quickly exchanged their fine point paintbrushes for large round sponge paintbrushes that make large round dots.  John did a lion:

And Michael, who had planned on doing a Wonka bar, traded in his purple paint for blue and green, and painted a 2 minute lake:

After placing their pointillism pictures on the counter to dry, Michael and John got busy decorating the fridge with "regular" paintings of Jedi Knights, and a brain that John wants to put into his science notebook, while Matthew took the assignment to heart and made this apple tree using actual dots:

Now, the boys can't be the only ones who have all the fun in this house, so I joined in as well.  I must admit that towards the end I enlisted the help of a larger brush as well, so I could quickly dot in the background.  After all, the masters took years to do a painting, I had about an hour.  James got a big glob of paint on my picture, I tried to turn it into a bird, a red headed woodpecker to be exact:

The boys (not wanting to bite the hand that feeds them) were kind enough to humor me and tell me how great they thought my painting was; feel free to do the same.  You never know when you might end up here for dinner and I'm sure you want your meal to be good! 

Candle Making Anyone?

I have already done our religious planning for this month with all the saints we are going to cover, but I guess Kent wasn't satisfied by what I chose because last night right before bedtime he excitedly asks, "Ooh, can we make some candles tomorrow?" 

Kent discovered that today was the feast day of St. Bernard, patron saint of candle makers, along with many other wax type professions, so he thought it would be a lot of fun to do.  I whole heartily agreed, but still had to play "party pooper", because even though we were given a wonderful link to Martha Stewart's Candles 101, there was still the issue of having to get all the supplies with less than 24 hours notice.   Not many craft stores stay open late on Sunday and today was a school day; I had my plans ready to go.  You don't want to mess with the Monday plans, especially when you had 3 days off the week before.

I wish we would have discovered this sooner! I REALLY want to do this, and I will, next year, assuming I can wait that long!  So mark your calendars: August 20, 2008.  Candle making party at my house.  We'll have plenty of time to get our supplies!

How Great Thou Art

Last year, mid way through school, I stopped using "Mommy, its a Renoir" and started introducing one artist or style of art at a time.    There's nothing wrong with the program, and I still have all the wonderful art postcards that came with each level.  I just didn't feel the need to follow a teachers manual that had me doing different things for every age, when art is something you can so easily combine, and just teach everyone at once. 

The first artist I chose was Norman Rockwell.  He is one of my personal favorites, and one I thought the boys would enjoy very much.  I can't even begin to tell you how much fun we had studying his work.  One of the greatest things we happened upon were the April Fool covers he did for the  "Saturday Evening Post" .  (There were 3 in all, and I must admit I had no idea this magazine still existed).   My mom was here when we started the Rockwell study, she was a great addition to the group and pointed out many things I would have missed.

Next came Georges Seurat.  He is known for his pointillism style of paintings.  We never got around to doing our own pointillism style painting, so we will begin our art study with that project this year. 

The first official artist for this year will be Claude Monet.  He happens to be another one of my favorites.  I came across the picture to the right and decided that we could also incorporate art into our bridge study as well. 

The boys will each have a chance to pick an artist this year, and I also plan to do a short study of mosaics using "Canticle of the Sun" and "Saint Valentine".  I've already purchased Magnetic Mosaic and Magnetic Dreaming to go along with this particular unit.

Finally, at some point in the year I would like to work in an artist/author study, doing someone like Beatrix Potter, Graeme Base or Don & Audrey Wood.  I have a very strong feeling the boys will want to to Graeme Base first.