What About Art?

The Hare by ALbrecht Durer

Art is my favorite subject. I love color, creative ideas, freedom to explore and all the different mediums, so I incorporate art in alot of our other studies. Lapbooks though very structured is a visual way to layout information thus a form of art. Observing nature is also a very good thing to do to develope your young artist. Learning to see and observe are foundational to art. When we put together our Phonics book of sounds, we tried all kinds of mediums and copying the works of real artists etc.

Girl With a Watering Can by Renoir

To learn more about the artists of the past I purchased a set of three books called Child Sized Matserpieces. We purchased step 1 step 2 and step 3. There are more if you are intersted. Each "book" contains about 30 art cards the size of large post cards. They are to be cut out of the book and handled by your kids. The size is really ideal for little hands. We play games like concentration with the cards face down, and go fish with some that are identical. The main goal we are aiming at is that the boys see art of all kinds and from all periods of art history and begin to learn names of the artists. In our concentration game I started out slow with a few cards but we have now combined all the cards from two books and make a huge game out of it. We match artists not works because that is what is available.

Elephant by Rembrandt

To view works of art individuallly for appreciation,  We used four books from the Come Look with me series.

Charlotte Mason called this appreciation of art, "picture study".

'Indeed, appreciation of art involves acquiring not technical knowledge, but what Charlotte mason calls" reverent knowledge. Reverent knowledge of what has been produced. Children should learn pictures, line by line, group by group, by reading, not books but pictures themselves. " " Bobby Scott from When Children Love to Learn.

And finally, I'll recommend Art projects for kids. It is a great site for introducing your kids to different mediums, projects following the artists from history, and basic drawing, painting skills. Max drew this cat with a few simple instructions. Kathy Barbo is our online art instructor, and her lessons and ideas are FREE! Her bolg button is on my side bar if you want to check it out.