Auguste Renoir and the New Notebook

This spring we have been taking a look at Auguste Renoir. The most famous painting he did was probably was the girl with the watering can, so I introduced this artist to the boys by having them do an art project with that painting. We did this fun technique with a Cezanne painting and it worked out so well I thought we would try it again with Renoir's Girl With the Watering Can.

Then we read a fun picture book entitled, The Girl With the Watering Can. We played several games of concentration with Renoir montesorri cards, and read the Smart About Art book About Him. Then we hunted through the You-tube files and found this fun video of him in his later years painting with arthritis deformed hands.

I started something new with Renoir that I hope will continue with all the other artists we study. I created a notebook art gallery. The idea came from this post. I loved her idea of keeping an ongoing gallery of all of the paintings the boys were learning. One day (I hope) they will be able to flip through it and recite all of the paintings by name that they have learned and share with others these beautiful works of art they have collected. It should make an impressive collection over the years.
With this great idea to begin with, I only had to make a few adjustments and we had ourselves a notebook gallery! The first adjustment was to use the notebook instead of the photo album. I had three white notebooks already. The second adjustment was to use plastic storage sleeves instead of photo album pages. I found these sleeves designed for storing coupons. Then, In publisher, I placed the image of the painting on one side and added some blanks to fill in on the other side. Then I printed them out onto cardstock and the boys put them into the sleeves how they liked. If  you already have the montesorri cards, buying sleeves to fit them could be a great way to start your notebook art gallery without having to create anything or print them out again.

Then slowly, maybe three cards at a time we looked up the date it was painted and filled in the other info on the card.

We haven't designed a cover for this notebook yet but as more artists are added we will. The fun part about this notebook is that you can add or take away the pages you want. This notebook may become our impressionist art gallery. Why not have one for each art period?

What I loved about using the notebook over the photo album was that we can insert our biography pages. Prior to creating the notebook art gallery I had no where to put this page once we had completed it. Now we do. We have already studied many impressionst artists, so perhaps as a review next year we will create cards for all the artist we have learned about so far and make this book a real work of art itself.

Metamorphosis

To begin our investigations of insects this summer we read Children of the Summer about Jean Henri Fabre and are reading now Fabre's Book of Insects aaannnndddd we ordered these caterpillars from Home Science Tools. Inside the cup were five painted lady caterpillars and food for them to eat to grow up big and strong. We set them out of the sun for several days until they began to grow.

After about three days the caterpillars had tripled in size.

Then, they each made themselves a chrysalis.

We placed a Chrysalis or two in each of our butterfly gardens and waited for them to emerge.

Once they emerged from their chrysalises we fed them for a few days with sugar water sprinkled on a flower at the bottom of the butterfly garden.

Then we let them go.

Just the Basics

Our school year is winding down. We have a few more things to wrap up in Egypt and in Astronomy and our artist study of Renoir is about half-way done. We finished all our other subjects including our phonics rule book and the second Elson reader, and now I have fun plans for the summer! We usually do school all year round unless we travel and it is just not possible...in the past that has been so, but this year even though we are traveling I have put together a "Just the Basics" homeschool for the road. It includes the three Charlotte Mason musts: Reading living books, narrating and copywork. We added some math. And simply for fun we are doing some nature study about bugs and birds and some art with Artistic Pursuits.

This is the 3R's bundle. In these two homemade books we get done math and reading, narration, and copywork. The boys keep the two books in their folders with a writing pen and we are set to go. A day of lessons looks like this:

• The boys read the story to me and then tell back the story they read. (narrate).
• Then they copy a sentence from the story. (see picture below)
• Then we do two pages from Everyday Number Stories.
• Then one day we do an art lesson, and then the next day nature study.
• I still read aloud to them at night, this summer we are reading through The Moral Compass compiled by William J. Bennett and other books like Children of the Summer and nature stories by Arthur Scott Bailey

The fun part about being on the road is that other people get to help out with the schooling.

Grandma is helping Zak with his reading lesson.

Using Peter and Polly in Spring (Peter and Polly in Summer follows spring and will soon be available at Currclick) the boys practice reading aloud, and then they narrate the story back to me. Both Everyday Number Stories and Peter and Polly in Spring are bound with a Pro-Click Binder. If we stay on schedule we may get to read both Peter and Polly in Spring and Peter and Polly in Summer before next year.

After the boys read and narrate they then copy a sentence from the story on this pre-made copywork page which is included in the Peter and Polly e-book along with ideas for nature study and a coloring page. We decided to just use the copywork pages.

Each day we also do two pages from Everyday Number Stories. If you like Emma Serl's Primary Language Lessons you may want to try this math book as Emma Serl wrote Everyday Number Stories too! 

I simply love this book. It is the perfect bridge for us to recall the addition and subtraction work we did this last year and to then introduce simple multiplication and division. Along the way we get exposure to fractions, measurement, days of the week, money and time.

Everyday Number Stories introduces each new concept first with a story about Frank and Kate using the math concept in real life. In the story above Kate is buying ribbon and she is inroducung the concept of 3 feet = 1 yard. Then on the opposite page the problems focus on doing sums with the info from the story. each time doing number problems are within a span, like number under 12 or under 24 etc.  it increases as the book continues until all numbers up to 144 are worked.

I also love that it is FREE!! Find it here.

For fun we are reading living books about bugs and birds and getting out in nature to observe them.

Above are the following tools the boys have in their back packs for our nature study this summer.

• Spiral bound notebook and a pen.
• small water color book for small paintings and a small paper pad for drawings.
•  a guide for bugs and a guide for birds. Pocket sized so they fit in their hands.
• Binoculars
• butterfly garden
• a bug jar with a magnifying top
• a butterfly net
• sharp eyes

We just finsihed reading Children of the Summer which is a delightful story about Jean Henri Fabri. The story is told from the point of view of his son Paul as he watched his father play "tricks" on different insects to see what they would do when Paul was a little boy. The illustrations are also fabulous!

Also for fun we are going to do many of the art lessons in Artistic Pursuits Grade K-3 Book Three and Child-sized Masterpieces Modern School for steps 6 and 7. So we get to explore painting, sculpture, junk fabrication, computer art and pastels. It will be a wonderful way to review the impressionists/post-impressionists we studied last year and bridge over to the post-impressionists/modern artists we plan to look at next year. After we do the 3R's we will alternate between doing nature study or an art lesson. Until then we are finishing up the subjects from last yet still undone. I love how home schooling can be so flexible!

I am so looking forward to this new fun schedule. Now if the weather would only get warmer.

When we are not doing this new schedule we have been doing this...

Climbing on the rock wall at the local Aquatic Center and...

Taking swimming lessons. This is Zak coming up for air and a big smile!