Field trip to DAM- games to play in the art museum

Another wonderful field trip provided by our homeschooling co-op!  We visited one of the best museums in Denver in my opinion- Denver Art Museum. Our first visit was a great success, this time around a docent was leading the tour and activities were more varied. It was a great learning experience and some games kids played today we played at home before, some were new. Next time we come or even just look at art in albums, remembering today's art adventure,we will play the following games:

1) Face expressions on portraits. It's a good idea to discuss what kind of mood a person on the portrait must have been and try to guess what kind of personality the person on the portrait had.

2) Tell a story. The docent offered children an opportunity to make up a story while looking at a Japanese scroll painting. I remember making up stories while looking at paintings one of the favorite quiet games of my childhood. Another interesting way to play would be to find a picture that would continue the story- that might be easier to play if there are several pictures of the same artist or the same style.

3) Imitate a picture. Creating living pictures was a popular entertainment before the age of radio and TV. It's a good idea to try and imitate a pose on a picture.

4) Find a color. Pick a color and try to find it on a picture or all the pictures in the gallery. At home we tried to play it bingo-style using playing cards sets from different museums.

5) Live inside a picture. Pick a painting and try to imagine yourself inside it. Where would you hide? What does it feel like? This activity was a favorite of my son's today.

change of seasons

As much as we miss California we really appreciate the change of seasons here.

Yesterday was a gorgeous late autumn day- clear skies with a few fluffy clouds, warm breeze...It's hard to believe that it could change overnight (having had a couple of heavy snowfalls this year already we are prepared:)), and yet the snow on the ground will be welcome.
Today -slightly colder, but still bright sun and fairly warm outside. We decided to talk again about seasons changing and what it means for plants and animals.
The book that helped us do it is Four Seasons:Uncovering Nature by Annie Jones - a beautiful present from friends. The book contains loads of information and is beautifully illustrated.

Another book we enjoyed is Autumn Story ( Brambly Hedge) by Jill Barklem. Sweet story and gorgeous illustrations.

After reading we did an art project , inspired by this picture I found on pinterest. This project took us two days to finish.
Day one: We sketched a forest scene on a large sheet of paper- some trees, animals. Second step was separating sheet vertically into four equal parts- one for each season (initially it was done in pencil, when D. was ready to color I erased pencil and traced a line with a white crayon). Day Two: D. traced outlines with crayons using appropriate colors for each season (bright green for fresh grass, gray-blue for snowy ground, dark brownish-green for autumn grass, etc.). The forth step is painting each part with watercolors. Add some outlining with oil pastels and glitter accents and voila!

Happy Weekend to All!

Texture city

This art activity was inspired by Texture Cities at Art Lessons for Kids. We simplified the activity a little bit. First we hunted around the house for some textured materials -felt, scraps of fabric of various textures, scraps of leather, different paper (wrapping paper for gifts, paper bags, tissue paper,paper towel), aluminum foil etc. Then D. drew the landscape using crayons- I only asked it to be a city and for details to be big enough and not to color them yet. After a small break D. picked out scraps of materials and a spot where to put each. I helped him trim scraps so they fit nicely. He glued them on and colored the rest using oil pastels. Some watercolor stains over the paper tower castle too :)

The Story of a treasure- my sister's paintings

Donni at The Magic Onions started a wonderful meme- she shares a story of a special treasure and invites bloggers to participate.

I want to share my sister's paintings today. She's younger than me and now the ocean is between us but there's an important part of her soul that stays with me until we meet again.
V. is an amazing painter although she never believes me when I tell her so. She's usually shy to share her art with strangers (and a perfectionist) and even we have a hard time catching her with a painting that is finished and not destroyed because it "was not good enough"
Anyway, 5 years ago when D. was born she came to visit  and she gave me a little painting that she made with us in mind, and while listening to my favorite song too. I was so happy I cried. It brights up our home and some times it seems to me that I can see sunflowers moving.

The other one of her paintings belongs to my dad, he takes it everywhere where he has to stay for longer than a week and hangs it on a wall. It was made 10 years ago in honor of our beloved dog Bella who is no longer with us. Bella was a Polish Tatra Sheepdog, beautiful snow-white creature. We miss her very much.

So here it is, our special treasure :)

Denver Art museum

Past weekend we had a visit to Denver Art museum. It was our first too (I can't believe how long it took us). We loved it so much, it's huge and they had lots of activities for kids that day.
I read a few good articles about preparing a child for a visit to an art museum, they helped a lot with organizing our trip and most important thing I learned was- don't try to see all at once (tempting it was to me).

Exploring the Art Museum: Making the Most of Your Child's First Visit

Visiting an Art Museum With Children

D. wasn't really interested in activities offered for children at the museum, save for the building section where children built towers with different materials.
Our main activities were :
1. Looking at portraits, we talked about different techniques, colors, clothing and facial expressions. We noticed that most people do not smile at portraits. I'm planning a portrait activity later in the week.
2. Couple of days before the museum visit I gave D. a small sketchbook, plus we dug up the pencil case I made for him a few months ago. He took both to the museum and then attempted to sketch his favorite painting. I think it turned out pretty good- he did outlines in the museum (seeing him sitting on the bench, his pencil case spread out, all serious and attentive was priceless) and finished picture at home using oil pastels.

D.'s pick-

By June the Light Begins to Breathe, Keith Jacobshagen

 

D.'s version

                                           
We had a really good time and again, hurray for free days, I'm really really grateful for those :) On the way out we picked lots of postcards at the gift shop and I found Dover art stickers books which we will use later for our lessons.

window display- Valentine's edition

We loved the idea of having window display so much that we updated it yet again.
Same simple work- paint cofee filters with pretty valentine colors ( D. tends to lean towards purple :D), cut out hearts, attach with scotch tape and voila :)

Learning about JAPAN: Japanese landscape art

It's all about Japan this last week in our house.
Today we looked through the book of Hiroshige prints and paintings.

We talked how there are recurring themes in pretty much every picture- trees, mount Fuji, rivers and sea (water), sunset, people. We talked how love and admiration of nature is an important part of Japanese culture. We also noticed that on these pictures colors weren't bright, nor were they even.

Then we attempted to create our own Japanese landscapes.
There are very good ideas at Smithsonian Education web site regarding teaching Art of Japan.
A few days ago I saw a lovely idea how to make pretty colors with markers and water at Deep Space Sparkle  and I figured it would be a great way to create these beautiful uneven colors.

First we drew our large shapes- hills, sea, volcano. We added extra color at the edges and some waves to the sea and pink clouds in the sky. Then we added small details- houses and  trees. We grabbed our paintbrushes and water and "washed" our paper. It was so much fun and running colors created a lovely effect. D. was delighted. It also good that we used several shades of the same color- it added to the overall prettiness. We did not "wash" small details, only large ones for fear that it's just going to be messy, so after our paintings dried up we finished coloring houses with regular markers.

D.'s finished painting

Learning about JAPAN- kimono

Today D. was at co-op all day and wasn't up to anything serious after. So we learned a little about kimono. 
Tons of information can be found here. We looked at several styles and discussed how it is a traditional dress in Japan. We talked how kimono is a work of art and did a little project:

First we drew an outline of the kimono : a rectangle, two squares to represent sleeves and couple of triangles. Then we traced the outline with blue crayon (D. decided it will be of blue silk) and added a collar in gold crayon.
D. drew a "scenery" all over the kimono and we colored it with watercolors. After design dried a little bit he painted the rest of the kimono blue (for that occasion I broke my favorite metallic watercolors to give it silkier look).

Finally we added purple background, cut kimono out and pasted it over black construction paper sheet.

Lots of fun.

January -keep learning about Japan

D. and I keep learning about Japan this month.

Today we read the book My Japan by Etsuko Watanabe.

 

It's a great book for introducing kids to culture of Japan, it talks about food, holidays, clothing. In the end it talks a little bit about hieroglyphs which gave us an opportunity to practice these as well.

We painted Sakura tree an idea for which I found  here.

The other day we watched  "Little travelers:Japan" dvd which we took from the library. It was interesting for D. and he learned a lot.

We keep looking at the map and finding new cities, grandma visited Japan 20 years ago and she's eager to share her memories as well. I have lots of activities planned out I only hope we will be able to squeeze them all in :D

the best season of all: day 3

It was a rough day for all of us so we had a quiet evening.
D. did crayon and watercolor snowflake painting.

We read "The High Hills" by Jill Barlem (Brambly Hedge series), the story is great and illustrations are absolutely gorgeous.

Right before the bedtime we baked Cranberry Muffins and for the first time since last holiday season we used our special snowflake muffin pan (which I got in target for $2, I do love their dollar section :))).

Cranberry Muffins recipe

Dry ingridients:

1 1/2 c of flour

1/2 c of sugar

1 tbs of baking powder

pinch of salt

Wet ingridients

1/4 c of melted butter

1 egg

1 cup of milk

1/2 c frozen cranberries

Preheat oven for 350 F

1. Mix dry and wet ingredients in separate bowls then mix together. Fold in cranberries.

2. Pour mixture in muffin pan (filling approximately 2/3 because muffins will rise) and bake for 35 minutes. Dust with powdered sugar if desired. Yum!

waaay behind

Oooh, I'm waaay behind on my postings..
The thing is I found a holiday job and it's taking up much more time than I expected it to. It's also takes a lot of my energy. I hope I will be able to put together a decent post soon. In the meantime I was looking through my old files and found fantastic paintings by Lynn Lupetti. I just love them all, they are full of magic.

More of her paintings could be seen here

Learning about Italy part 1

We are learning about Italy this week. I figured I'd better make one or two big posts about it just to keep all activities in one place.

Monday:

We took out globe and atlas and found Europe, then Italy ("it looks like a shoe!" ), looked how far it is from out town and vowed to go there someday ("mommy, can we go tomorrow?" ). D. demanded to know if there are any volcanoes, we found two and he was satisfied. We talked a little bit about Pompeii too. We looked where the major cities are situated, what is the capital and learned some Italian words.
Then we made a card that will go to our "destinations" folder. On a sheet of white construction paper D. wrote Italy in English and Russian, capital, language and drew the flag. Then the fun started- we have a huge pile of old National Geographic magazines at home and we looked through them for some pictures. The pictures  and tiny maps that we found we then glued on the sheet. I wrote few Italian words on the back of the sheet- D. loved the idea of learning a new language.  D. was absolutely thrilled when he found this ad "look mama, it says ITALIAN!"  he even did a little dance around the room. :)

Tuesday:

We read " Strega Nona: her story" by  Tomie de Paola  and learn more words. D.'s favorite was "aglio selvatico" :). D. loved the book and the little rhyme in it. Then he drew a picture of Strega Nona he tried but the tile roof was a challenge for him I must say.

Then we listened to some songs (Stella stellina, Volevo un gatto nero- kids songs and couple of my personal favorites Una poesia anche per te by Elisa, Nell'azzurita by Eros Ramazzotti)  and opera pieces ("O soave fanciulla", "O sole mio", "O mio babbino caro"). I translated for him "O mio babbino caro" and he was very serious while he listened to it. After it was over he turned to me and asked "So where is the daddy , isn't he coming on stage?" :)

Wednesday:

It turned out a very busy day for me, so we did only a fraction of what was really planned. We looked through "Anno's Italy", it is a great book with very detailed pictures. It doesn't have any text so it was fun to imagine what people on the pictures were doing and thinking. He loved poppies on the pictures about Tuscany.
We talked about the leaning tower of Pisa and did this project. We deviated a bit from the instructions and merely bended our pipe cleaners, D. wasn't up to scrupulous work that day.

Thursday:

Today we learned about Venice. We read "Olivia goes to Venice" by Ian Falconer. Now I'm not sure if I liked the story in this book very much especially towards the end of the book , but pictures are great and D. enjoyed it. The final part where the bell tower breaks had him frowning and we had to look some pictures up in order to assure him that the tower was indeed fine.:)
After that we did a great art project Venetian Architecture that we borrowed from laugh, paint, create 
We outlined palazzi using crayons and painted over with watercolors. D. loved the idea of painting reflections and he drew his gondola after I showed him how. I love his colors as always, so bright.

So here we are, 3 more days to go. I'm still thinking if it should be one country every month or one country per two weeks. Every week is going to be too much- D. is only 5 after all and no way I can prepare the material and organize it for every week :) So yeah, I will post part 2 on Sunday I think :)

Friday mumblings

First of all, it was really cold today. I had to take D. to Kindergarten (he goes one day a week along with other home schooled children to the special program from the district) and I thought,"thank God I don't have to do it every day"- seriously, brrrrrrr. Another perk of homeschooling I guess, especially now that it's only getting colder. :)

Got  a lot of positive feedback from the teacher today. It's funny, no matter how confident I am in my abilities to teach him and his ability to learn, it seems that I need to hear that he's doing well from someone else after all. :) It was a relief to hear that he's doing great, that he is not shy with other children...


While D. was out and C. napped I attempted to give second life to hubby's old sweater. I accidentally washed it and it felted. I needed a new "winter" bag, so I sewn one out of this sweater.  First of all, I've never sewn wool before and it was tricky to say the least, second I think I cut out handles wrong because they stretch quite a bit, it'll be ok, I just have to remember not to stuff it with heavy books. Third, I can't put this needle away and I needle felted a crazy bird on this bag. I like it very much, even if this is too childish for a grown woman, I don't care :D

    So here it is- "Ginger Owl".

D. was very agitated after school it was very hard to calm him down, he did finish painting second side of the "destinations" folder, rockets, comet, planets and as he said a huge bird this time :))

To all my friends and visitors have a fabulous week-end!

Quiet day, some art, new playscape.

Today is another quiet day, children playing, painting, me catching up on various projects.


D. painted one side of "destinations" folder that we are making in anticipation of our lessons that are going to start next week.  The folder is made out of one big sheet of poster paper. It's going to contain all of the artwork and collages that we are going to make. Today D. painted all of the modes of transportation that he could think of  :) he insisted on coloring it with watercolors which are a little pale in my opinion, but it turned out great

I finished another needle felted playscape, I can't seem to stop :) Too many flowers on this one I think, still have to work on trees.... I have to take a break now before we have too many.

Checking in

I haven't posted for two days, I can't believe how busy we were.

D.'s clay classes have started again, fun at the pool- C. is such a little fish it's unbelievable. I'm working on another playscape-these things sure are addicting, in the meantime we are trying to prepare for Thanksgiving and to the month-long celebration that we usually do in December.

We've been reading "How to make an apple pie and see the world" by Marjorie Priceman the other day and I thought that it's time for us to start our geography/culture lessons. I'm trying to put everything together for the first "destination" and  I will make a special post dedicated to it later.

We said goodbye to the golden autumn until next year for sure, it was raining and snowing yesterday. Pretty dry today but lots of frost in the morning.

We learned about impressionists yesterday and D. did his first still life by choice :) I loved how he attempted to make small brush movements, which can't be really seen in the photo, I love his color choices too :) The dots are made with wine corks -lovely idea from ever creative Valerie at Frugal Family Fun Blog

Sunday

What a long day it seems to be. Quite peaceful though.

C. woke me up really early today and I caught an amazing sunrise, it looked like cotton candy, so gorgeous.

D. did a Kinder Line Art project from Art Project for kids. He drew too many lines and we had to separate sheet in 4 sections so he doesn't get too overwhelmed with all the spaces to color.What was really interesting about this project -D. was making up stories about every picture that he was coloring. One of the sections became a sea with a ship and an island, another magic mountain...I love watching him sink into his own world, and what a blessing it is when he shares it with me. He finished only half of the project so more fantastic stories await us tomorrow :)

Also I made a tiny needle-felted doll, using this tutorial from Moment to Moment, obviously I still have a lot to learn because it turned out weird :D , but D. cuddled it and pronounced her "the fairy of crayons" because of her colorful outfit.

Nature book+more art :)

Today I would like to write about a wonderful book that I found in my local parenting magazine.
"The nature Connection and outdoor workbook for Kids, Families and Classrooms" by Clare Walker Leslie
This book is fantastic, it's full of fun facts, activities and worksheets. Some of the activities are separated by month. There are tips how to sketch plants and animals, what to watch for and when, ideas for outdoors adventures. Great source for all ages.

After a crazy busy day yesterday we finally sat down for more artistic endeavors:

D's "churches"

My attempt to capture an evening among the city buildings, A4 watercolor.

Autumn theme continued

Windy day today, wind has stripped trees from the rest of the leaves. It was delightful to watch leaves dance around. It inspired today's creations for aedm.
D.'s task was to paint the background in fall colors with a wide brush , then to add dots with a smaller brush.
I did another ATC because cards are small and I can actually complete one and do it fast :).

"Dancing leaves"

Book of the day :  "Woody, Hazel and Little Pip" by Elsa Beskow which was absolutely lovely, we enjoyed it a lot.
Background noise: Concerning Hobbits by Howard Shore ("The Lord of the Rings" OST)

Art

"To delight a child, to add a new joy to the crowded miracles of childhood, is no less worth doing than to leave a Sistine Chapel to astound a somewhat bored procession of tourists; or to have written a classic that sells by the thousands and is possessed unread by all save an infinitesimal percentage of its owners. It is, then, not an ignoble thing to do one’s very best to give our coming rulers – children – a taste of the Kingdom of Art."
-Gleeson White
  

Since we decided to do art all month long for aedm challenge, I figured I better put together a list of some children books about art. The books will be displayed on the goodreads widget on the right side, now, the widget displays only 20 books, but the full list can be found here and  is about 40 books long plus I will keep adding books as I find them.  The same goes for books about fall list.

We doodled and painted all afternoon today, D. did pumpkin/apple using Faber-Castell gel sticks (the colors are great but flakes fall everywhere if he presses the tube to hard), I played with D.'s crayons, watercolors and glittering pens to make an ATC.

D.'s masterpiece

Overall lovely day. :)