Category Archives: Art

Garfield (the Cat, Not the President)

According to my special days calendar, June 19 is Garfield’s (the cat, not the president) birthday! We will be having fun learning with our favorite cat as part of our homeschooling summer school subject of the day.

I’ll be combining math, health, science, and life skills as the kids add up the calories contained in our crock pot lasagna kitchen project, and figure how much Wii Just Dance it will take to burn those calories.

We checked these out from the library for hilarious reading.

I found these links for the kids to follow for computer lab, art, and fun.

Garfield Online Comics

educational games http://www.professorgarfield.org/pgf_home.html

how to draw for younger kids http://www.dragoart.com/tuts/12843/1/1/how-to-draw-garfield-easy.htm

drawing for older kids http://www.my-how-to-draw.com/how-to-draw-garfield.html

games for fun http://www.garfield.com/fungames.html

And what would a Garfield themed day be without a nap? I’m putting that in our day’s plans, too.

betty jo

Mathematical Art

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“For me it remains an open question whether [this work]
pertains to the realm of mathematics or to that of art.”

– M.C. Escher

June 16 , 1898 is the birthday of mathematician/graphic artist M.C. Escher. He combined art with science and geometry. He created colorful and interesting tessellations, polyhedra, and topologies. His bizarre and fascinating works are more famous today, than they were during his lifetime.

As part of this weeks homeschooling summer school calendar studies, we will be following these links as we learn about M.C. Escher and attempt some mathematical art of our own.

Biography http://www.surfnetkids.com/go/205/about-mc-escher/

Picture gallery http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/gallery-symmetry.htm

Art gallery tour https://www.nga.gov/features/slideshows/mc-escher-life-and-work.html

How to draw an impossible cube Escher style http://www.wikihow.com/Draw-an-Impossible-Cube

Online tessellation games http://www.mathcats.com/explore/tessellationtown.html

Printable worksheets http://printableworksheets.in/?dq=M%20C%20Escher

betty jo

Girls and Flowers

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E17 had a few of her friends over to our house last night. What fun!

Tonight is our homeschooling support group’s prom (alternative) and the girls NEED corsages. A variety of fresh flowers, greenery, wire, tape, sequins, rhinestones, glitter, feathers, ribbon, and hot glue mixed with some craftiness and laughter, and presto – beautiful corsages for their big night!

This is E’s corsage.

Of course they didn’t forget about the guys. The girls made boutonnieres for them out of the leftovers.

Here’s another post about our homeschool support group’s special night for the teens https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/04/05/spring-formal/

betty jo

Our Homeschooling Week, April 15-19

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This homeschooling week started off with an unplanned study on poison ivy remedies. My daughter brought the itchy rash home with her from last week’s mission trip.

We learned that placing potato slices over the rash sites was an effective treatment.

Also this week, we the added an anemometer and a barometer to our homemade weather forecasting center.

Z7 updated the current conditions chart and practiced weather related jokes. His favorite this week is, “What does a cloud wear under it’s raincoat? Thunderwear!”

For “Poem In Your Pocket” day we not only kept poems in our pockets, but also studied poetic devices. Instead of notebooking or lapbooking our printable mini posters, we put them on our current (art in progress) chalkboard wall. I think it looks nice having some of the blank spaces filled in.

And, SALT (saved, anointed, loved, transformed) practice for our homeschool group’s creative ministries troop.

And, Silver Lining, homeschool color guard practice.

We will be ending our homeschooling week with our monthly homeschool support group’s family game night and potluck.

How was your week?

betty jo

Poetry In Chalk

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We have a chalkboard wall in our kitchen/school room. Currently, we are in the process of working on a project called “April Showers Bring May Flowers”. We are only working on it on rainy days and hopefully the whole wall will be covered in flowers and butterflies by May.

Yesterday, being Poetry In Your Pocket Day, we used the wall for our poetry studies.

All the poetry devise mini posters filled up the blank spots rather well.

For another blog post about our “Poetry In Your Pocket” Day click here https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/04/18/poetry-in-your-pocket/

For more about our chalkboard wall click here https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/one-of-our-favorite-things-the…

betty jo

Leonardo da Vinci

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After taking a break from our middle ages unit studies this week to study spring weather, we will be returning to them again next week. We will be finishing up our artists lessons with Leonardo da Vinci. The timing for this is perfect because his birthday is April 15. That means that we can work some cake baking and decorating into our homeschooling day.

Below are the links we will be using for the da Vinci study

Biography, art gallery, games, quizzes, printables and more from here http://www.gardenofpraise.com/art17.htm

Even though our library did not have Leonardo’s Horse I think we can still make good use of these lapbooks using what we found here http://www.homeschoolshare.com/leonardos_horse.php

Artist Notebooking Page https://notebookingfairy.com/artist-notebooking-page/

And da Vinci quotes from here http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/leonardo_da_vinci.html

Since da Vinci is famous for his works of the human body and portraits we are going to try the lessons from here http://www.drawingnow.com/tutorials/view/how-to-draw-people-step-by-step-for-kids/ and here http://www.learn-to-draw.com/figure-drawing/07-drawing-muscles.shtml

Da Vinci Inventions http://www.da-vinci-inventions.com/davinci-inventions.aspx

For other posts about our middle ages art studies click here https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/04/06/raphael/ and here https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/03/07/art-day-sistine-chapel-style/ and here https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/03/12/gothic-revival-in-western-kentucky/

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.” Leonardo da Vinci

betty jo

Taking A “Rain” Day

Raphael

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Knowing that Raphael was born April 6, 1483 we included him in our homeschool’s Middle Ages/Renaissance unit study this week. (I like it when historic days can be fit in to our learning.) (My kids like it when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can be fit in to our learning.) So this art study was a win/win situation.

Garden of Praise has a short but good biography of him as well as quiz, word puzzles, coloring page, and more printables. Here’s there link to Raphael’s page, but spend some time here browsing around. They offer a wonderful selection of resources. http://gardenofpraise.com/art33.htm

Inspired by Raphael’s work on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, we’ve been drawing angels.

Z7 and J9 linked here for their art practice http://artforkidshub.com/how-to-draw-an-angel/

B15 and E17 gave this lesson a try http://www.dragoart.com/tuts/15007/1/1/how-to-draw-a-guardian-angel,-angel-statue.htm

For those of you who might be wondering how our angels turned out. Well, there’s a good reason why I’m not sharing photos of them. We were a bit disappointed in our work. Wings are tough to draw. The lesson learned falls more into the category of Art Appreciation this time instead of Art Application. And I even have a link for this

You might be an artist if …

–The only piece of new furniture you have in your home is a $2000 easel.
–You’ve ever cleaned your fingernails with a palette knife.
–You butter your toast with your fingers, just to feel its texture.
–You’ve ever considered framing your palette instead of the painting.
–You notice the burnt umber in the background of the Playboy centrefold.
–Your children are forced to share a room so you can have an art studio.
–You routinely drink the rinse water instead of the coffee.
–The suggestion that you should “teach” or “open a flower shop” or “go to law school” makes you want to scream and throw things.
–You know the difference between beige, ecru, cream, off-white, and eggshell.
–Your favorite fragrance is eau d’ linseed oil.
–You do judge a book by its cover.

from http://www.top10-best.com/a/top_10_best_art_jokes.html

Leonardo da Vinci has a birthday coming up April 15. We will be learning about him that week. And blog posting about him, too.

I’m regretting not having the time to make Raphael a birthday cake. Maybe, I’ll buy him one. Eating birthday cake while practicing drawing those angel wings sounds like a plan to me.

For another post about our Renaissance artists studies click here https://stilllearningsomethingnew.com/2013/03/07/art-day-sistine-chapel-style/

betty jo

Gothic Revival in Western Kentucky

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We toured some local historical churches with our homeschool support group. The three we visited are over 100 years old. Not that old on the scale of old churches around the world, but old enough to have history. Each of these were designed in a Gothic Revival manner, meaning that they look like mini middle age cathedrals.

The windows we admired were beautiful stained glass, the Bible in art, just like those windows from long ago when the common man could not read the stories for himself, but instead saw them in the church windows.

As I stood amazed at the artisan skill, I was humbled at the thought that God chooses not these fine buildings for his home, but us. “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God.” (1 Corinthians 6:19)

One of the tour guides reminded us of this lesson from Luke 21:5-6, ^“Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.” I’m glad to have seen these and shared them with my kids and friends before that happens.

betty jo

Art Day – Sistine Chapel Style

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As part of our “cathedral” section of our current middle ages unit studies, we researched Michelangelo and his masterpiece ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. To get a feel of what laying on your back and painting was like, we taped some paper to our dry erase board and and set it across a couple of chairs, then took turns laying under it to paint Bible story scenes. Even the homeschool graduate wanted in on this project. I love it when our assignments capture the interest of the older kids.

This is A21.

Tay art 1