art

Middle School Art

May 7, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 4 Comments

We listened to Haydn’s Farewell Symphony. It was part of our classical history studies with Tapestry of Grace Year 2 and the book was on the girls’ list of reading, but we read it together as a family and was delighted and then I found the whole symphony on YouTube. It is magnificent.

Liz finally broke out her acrylics and painted this:

She loves abstract art. I love her representation of the musicians’ candles. She explained which parts of her painting meant which emotion from the symphony.

Brilliant.

Check out these great Haydn notebooking pages.

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Filed Under: art, notebooking, Tapestry of Grace Tagged With: art, Charlotte Mason, classical, Haydn, history, notebooking, Tapestry of Grace

Katie the Artist

February 8, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 4 Comments

We discovered these books at a consignment shop and have been lucky to collect quite a few in the series. Of course, my Katie loves them! They are delightful books that follow the imaginative adventures of Katie into the world of art and historical places.

Every day, Kate asks if we can do art first. Every day, I tell her we have to do math and reading and history and science first. Art is her favorite subject! I use this as an incentive to get her to cooperate with the other subjects. We try to incorporate arts and crafts into everything we do for her since she loves it so much.

Currently, Kate’s other favorite thing is Song School Spanish. Review coming up soon!

Here’s a picture Kate drew the other day with markers of my cherry limeade. Even though the straw is floating, I was impressed by the 3D lid.

We got Kate and Tori a guitar for Christmas. They’d been begging and we’re going through the lessons on Schoolhouse Teachers. Kate is also teaching herself to play piano. We use the KinderBach app and My First Piano Adventure. I am amazed at her musical ability. She’s always singing or humming.

Little brother Alex wants to do everything his sisters do. Here, Kate and Alex are painting with watercolors. These two don’t often get along.

Alex also joined his sisters here with their Harmony Fine Arts lesson. They drew Giotto angels with chalk pastels.

Everything Kate does, she does it with style. Vacuuming is so much easier when you’re wearing a princess dress!

Kate is our free spirit. She thinks outside the box. She excels at everything she does. She can already read chapter books and she’s not even 6 yet. She soaks up knowledge. I pray that she grows up and does radical and amazing things for God.

Filed Under: art, Elementary Tagged With: art, history, living books, siblings, sisters

Winter Nature Walk

January 12, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 7 Comments

Join us on our walk around our neighborhood?

I love the birches in this area. Their bark really stands out…and has eyes!

an evergreen silhouette with the sun shining through it.

a tree that still has leaves on it

Just look at that gorgeous bark! I think it’s a striped maple.

crows in the tree. they were eating walnuts.

and, look! a crow footprint in the snow.

this tree already has buds on it

this birch with buds and catkins

juniper berries. Tori was good to spot these.

a really big beautiful rock in someone’s front yard

a poignant picture of unpruned withered roses with rocks

Tori was excited by how long her shadow was.

Rosehips along the next door neighbor’s fence. I love how they stand out against the gray and snow.

our new nature display box. I found this at Hobby Lobby. perfect.

the girls hard at work drawing the milkweed pods

Tori is proud of her tree silhouette page

Katie is drawing the buds and crows in her tree silhouette

Alex drew his pictures too. He loves being a part of it all.

Tools we use and love

Outdoor Hour Challenges

Winter Challenges

Notebooking Pages

Amazon.com Widgets

Sure glad we got in that walk since we’re in a blizzard this weekend!

Tori got a little rock set for Christmas and we’re going to explore that since all our rocks are under billows of snow right now.

Filed Under: art, Charlotte Mason, Elementary, Nature Study, notebooking, Preschool, Tot School Tagged With: art, drawing, nature, notebooking, rocks, snow, trees, walk, winter

Winter Theme Fun

January 6, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

We’re having fun with winter art and nature study! We plan to learn about wintry themes all month long!

I used painter’s tape to make snowflake shapes and the kids finger-painted the poster.

After the paint dried, I pulled off the tape, and voila! lovely wintry decoration!

The kids loved coloring in their winter colors grid. We’re using ideas from Winter Nature Study eBooks.

Alex saw orange and purple among all the gray and white. He looked really hard out that window!

a fun magnifying and matching activity with Snowflake Bentley’s snowflake pictures. We will read that book later this week! It’s on hold at the library. also from the winter nature study eBooks.

our winter sensory bin table.

When Alex tells you that he’s “making dinner” and then you hear water running, please know that the sensory bin will be soon destroyed. I had originally put packing peanuts in the bin for “snow.” Yeah, those were disintegrated.

a fun craft on clearance. little snow fuzzies

our January poem on our monthly theme board

our January calendar about the Arctic and Antarctica

Check out my winter Pinterest board with all the fun ideas I hope to make use of this month!

Filed Under: art, Charlotte Mason, Nature Study Tagged With: art, January, nature, new year, sensory bin, snow, snowflake, winter

Snow Painting

November 20, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

I had gotten this snow paint art kit last year, on clearance.

It’s not that pretty.

Rather abstract.

But the kids had so much fun!

Tori makes an aquamarine color with green and blue. Her favorite color.

Katie (our resident artist) makes a lovely rainbow snowball.

Alex’s orange snowball.

Katie’s finished product. I think it kinda looks like a frog head.

But what do I know?

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Filed Under: art, Elementary

Chalk Pastel Scrub Jays

October 22, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

We’re studying Leonardo da Vinci in history these next few weeks. Here is one of our texts for Tapestry of Grace Year 2. It’s a biography and it has activities for us to do too! We’re enjoying reading it together. It is very helpful for Katie, a kinesthetic learner to understand Leonardo with a book like this! Tori is a visual learner and loves doing activities too. It helps her remember what we’ve read when she sees her projects completed. Katie has no trouble with narration, but this helps Tori, who stumbles over narrating exercises.

I remember pinning some tutorials on chalk pastel art and I hunted those down here and here. We chose to draw a scrub jay since they are prolific in our yard and quite pretty and blue. We looked him up on The Cornell Lab of Ornithology website. Perfect picture to copy!

This was a new and messy project! We kept paper towels handy.

The girls were tickled to learn a new word: scumble. It means to rub the chalk and smear it to make it look softer.

Very pleased with herself! Tori is our perfectionist and this gave her a boost of confidence!

I like the outline in black. Obviously, I need to acquire more pastels if we’re sharing.

My attempt at drawing. I will tell you: I need to do this more often with my girls. It was a bonding experience. It was so relaxing and meditative to sit there and draw. I loved doing this with the girls.