First she mixed Plaster of Paris with water.

Next, she poured it into a pie plate mold.

Next, she shook all the air bubbles out and then waited for it to set up.

Later in the day she painted her creation!

This was a very fun project and I plan to try doing some different things with plaster.  I have some ideas for nature projects!

The idea for fresco painting came from my favorite artist project book, Discovering Great Artists by MaryAnn Kohl.

What a wonderful blessing it has been to get the opportunity to have these!  You can click on any of the above icons to find more information on and to listen to a sample of each CD.

First of all, I will talk about the children’s CD’s.  On a recent three hour car trip, my four year old refused to allow us to listen to anything BUT these CD’s!  She was particularly fond of the Travel Songs CD as was evidenced by the third time listening through it.  Usually by the end of a long car trip we would have a cranky preschooler, but not this time!  The songs are upbeat and cheerful, just what you’d expect for children.

Now, on to MY favorites, the classical music CD’s.  After listening to these, I’m planning to thoroughly use them this coming school year.  I especially love the Classics The Masters CD.  It’s a wonderful compilation of works from a variety of composers.  That will come in handy as we study various composers throughout the year.

I give a huge thumbs up on all of the above CD’s and look forward to continuing to enjoy them in the future!

Anyways, I’d like to post something here a little different.  I know my posts are almost always nature-y, but with the beginning of a new school year I’ll be breaking out of that mold just a bit from now on.

My 13 yo daughter has always been into to art.  She’s the creative type, with either her pencil to paper drawing or her nose stuck in a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings novel, the latest has been Inkheart.  Her drawings have always had a  “cartoon” flair to them.  Well, lately she’s been taking to working on the computer with her art.  In the past I’ve thought art traditionally involved a piece of paper and pencil (or other traditional art medium).  But these days, I’ve realized that’s not all.  It involves a computer and mouse too.  She’s been using the Paint program on our computer to create these fun masterpieces (I had to beg for her to allow me to share them!).

"Good Morning"

"Hoot"

"Lemonade"

"Melt"

"Fly Away"

I think my favorite it the last one because I can clearly see a story in it.  It tells of a balloon who after living a pretty rough life has broken free to fly away.

Drawing with a mouse requires quite a bit of hand control, thus I’ve been letting my Kindergartner work with it too to help improve her handwriting.  It works!

So this year our art studies will not only include a piece of paper and traditional art materials, but also a computer and mouse.

This beautiful poem is excellent to read for vivid metaphors such as…”and swarming frost flakes fill the trees with billions of albino bees.”

Whenever we read poetry it seems to inspire art, so that is just what we did.

Hannah's Artwork

Mom's Artwork

On the subject of snow, here are my latest macro snowflake photos and one from our bird feeders.

Sectored Plate Snowflake

Stellar Dendrite Snowflake

Broken Pieces of Stellar Dendrite Snowflakes

I have made up a journal/worksheet for my kids to grab and use. If you would like to download the Classical Music Journal, click on the link below.

 Self Portrait, 1875-1877 

There were two main lessons that we learned from researching about Cezanne. First, here is a quote from a letter that he wrote to his childhood best friend Emile Zola. And it won’t be surprising to you all why I love it so much.

“…all the pictures painted inside, in the studio, will never be as good as those done outside. When out-of-door scenes are represented, the contrasts between the figures and the ground is astounding and the landscape is magnificent.”

When my daughter read this in a book today, she announced how appropriate that was for us! Cezanne’s preference was to place himself in front of nature, painting at the scene.

The second lesson we learned was to be true to who you are as an artist. Cezanne was ahead of his time; his artwork was unlike the typical realistic, 3-D art of the time. He was different, he wanted his paintings to have a more flat appearance with varied perspectives. Despite critics being really tough on his different methods Cezanne stayed true to who he was as an artist right up until he passed away. And it was only after then that his artwork started to get noticed and became famous.

My daughter has a different style to the way she does art, she likes to do everything to look animated, like cartoons. After learning about Cezanne today she proclaimed, “That’s the way I feel when I try to draw something very realistic like a lot of artists do, I feel weird and I can’t ever be happy with it. But when I do it the way I like to, I’m always pleased with what I do.”

Next Tuesday for our Art lesson I will challenge her to paint a still life (Cezanne did many still life paintings) or a nature scene outside, giving it her style, making it her own. I’ll post about that then.

In the meantime, here are two excellent books on Paul Cezanne that we used and that I recommend, as there is much more to learn about him!

Also, here is an online gallery of his works:

www.abcgallery.com/C/cezanne/cezanne.html

Warning – as with just about all artists of that time, there are some explicit paintings.

After our beginning studies this morning, I started one of our unit studies with the kids, called Butterflies Flutter By. It’s not available quite yet on our website but stay tuned, it will be shortly; along with a big announcement for why it’s so special.

We had a wonderful general overview lesson on butterflies and caterpillars, some of which was review but I did kick it up a notch to learn some new things. Then we grabbed our notebooking page, identification guide and butterfly net and set outside to the meadow in the empty lot beside our house.

We took a couple of detours, checking our garden to see if the birds had left us any strawberries. As usual we found a bloom and the beginnings of a fruit, but no delicious ripe ones.

As we headed out into the meadow we found the biggest white clover we’d ever seen. This may sound strange, but if you’ve never smelled the white clover with pink trimming on it, you’re missing out. Seriously, they smell like sweet cherry Kool-aid. And this one being so large was more fragrant that we’d ever smelled.

Ok, focusing back on butterflies, we saw several different kinds whizzing past us: a Monarch, lots of Cabbage White and Clouded Sulfur Butterflies, a Pearl Crescent, an Eastern Tailed Blue, and a Pipevine Swallowtail. Hannah tried and tried to catch each butterfly, chasing them round and round, and just when she’d about given up, victory was hers. The Pipevine Swallowtail was generous enough to hold still long enough for her to get him in the net.

We placed the Swallowtail into an observatory and watched the generous butterfly for a long time. We tried to get good photos, however the poor thing was quite panicky and fluttered about senselessly. We did manage to get the following one. Pipevine Swallowtails are quite beautiful, however this one was very tattered and torn, probably encounters with birds.

After enjoying him for a bit, Hannah was ready to set the “poor thing” free.

Back inside we reminisced by reading a favorite poem by Christina Rossetti, Caterpillar.

Which made us remember an art project Hannah did years ago, I suppose when she was about in second grade. So we dug out her art portfolio and sure enough found it. She had divided the page into fourths and drew scenes from the poem.

After reminiscing, we created a fun butterfly art project using the “stained glass” effect. I adapted this lesson from the Usborne Book of Art Ideas.

For this project you will need plain paper, thin oil pastels, and watercolor paint. Starting with a blank piece of paper, fold it in half, creating a crease. Open the paper up and lightly pencil in half of a butterfly on one side of the crease in the paper. Put in whatever details you would like the butterfly to have. After you have penciled it in, go over the lines with a black oil pastel, pressing heavy to make a thick outline. Next, refold the paper and use the edge of a ruler, or something else hard, to press the imprint down. Upon unfolding the paper you should have a symmetrical print on the other side of the crease.

Use the black oil pastel to go over and make the imprinted lines darker.

Next, use watercolor paints (mix with a little water first) to paint the butterfly. Hannah decided to cut hers out, while I left mine on alone.

Because of the water used with the paint, it makes the paper slightly translucent and they are perfect to hang in a sunny window!

And these Large Yellow Wood Sorrel, which are much larger than the regular Yellow Wood Sorrel we saw everywhere last year.

 And these Golden Ragwort.

Today we each took a photo of wildflowers and did some rock painting.

I think Gabby really enjoyed herself!

While we were painting, we were entertained further by watching the cat enthralled with our new toad friend.

- Henri Matisse

This weekend my older daughter and I had a little mother/daughter time, which for us often times leads to something artsy (who says art can’t be done on off-school hours?).  Recently, we had checked out a book from our library called Over in the Artic, which is illustrated by Jill Dubin.  Ms. Dubin uses cut paper art for the illustrations.  I was really intrigued by this art, I think it’s beautiful!  Using scrap pieces of paper, any kind, you can create beautiful artwork.  Here is an example from the book (you can see more at her site):

I remembered that in our Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters book there was an activity for Henri Matisse that was using this same type of style of art.  Mr. Matisse, made bright, joyful paper collages in simple shapes.  There is a online biography on Mr. Matisse here:  Henri Matisse Biography.  Also two great kid’s books to read to learn more are:

Henri Matisse (Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists)

Henri Matisse: Drawing with Scissors

So, we pulled out our scrapbook papers (which I hardly ever use for scrapbooking) and visualized in our minds the scenes we wanted to create, and got to work!  This was so much fun!

Hannah’s Beginning Work

Mom’s Beginning Work

Continuing to Work

Mom’s Finished Spring Scene

Hannah’s Desert Scene