Art

So, one of my BIGGEST goals for this year is to incorporate more art. My oldest is an artist, in every sense of the word. She loves all things artistic (dance, theater, music, painting, drawing...etc, etc, etc). I have signed up for an art class, and she seems to really enjoy learning the more technical side. She is clearly a visual learner, and after reading "the way they learn" by Cynthia Tobias, I realize that I need to incorporate more artistic things across our curriculum for her. I also got a great art "curriculum" called Great Artists.


To tie into our unit on China, she was reading in "What Your 4th Grader Needs to Know" about Chinese art (calligraphy, and painting on silk specifically). So, for art one day we broke out a "Paint Your Own Silk Scarves" kit she had gotten last Christmas (she had done one or two, but I knew we had one more...I'm really glad that worked out, unfortuneatly I can't take credit for planning it that way). And, she painted on silk....










In DD#2's "What Your Third Grader Needs to Know" book, she was reading about Mary Cassatt, so I looked up Cassatt in our Great Artists book, and we did this "Monoprint" project. She painted her painting on a cookie sheet, then she pressed a piece of white cardstock onto it, and then lifted to get a print.

The print is now framed on our wall. This is an idea I got from somewhere in cyberspace.....I can't remember the resource! Each of the kids have a frame and I periodically change out our art work. When they do a new project that they really like (or I really like), I put it into the frame. They really enjoy having their artwork displayed in this way, and that people comment when they come into our house (the frames actually flank our hallway, one on each side...so they are hard to miss).

I also used this Artists Coloring Pages website, which was shared with me on my Homepreschool group. She colored the Cassatt page, but they have MANY to choose from!