History Comes to Life

Months of studying the early Renaissance has brought us to Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarotti. Sometimes I wonder if we'll ever finish. But then we have days like Thursday and Friday of this week, when my children's enthusiasm for the subject matter spills over, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Reading about all the sculptures and art led to this:

Why do I so often let the opportunity for times like this pass by? I'm thankful that this time I didn't.

The Group of Seven

Have I mentioned before that we have the Best Art Teacher In The World? I have? Well that’s because I believe it’s true. Take a look at this, and see if you agree:

Mrs. Z. introduced the students in our group (aged 5-15) to The Group of Seven, giving a bit of their historical and biographical context. And then, after looking through several collections of paintings by artists from The Group of Seven, each student chose a painting whose style and subject matter they would like to imitate.

They began with pencil contour lines on their canvases, and then used a clear gel medium to give texture to areas of the painting. (The students would be working with acrylics, which dry smooth, and needed to add ‘artificial texture’ to the canvas to reproduce the thick texture and brush strokes of the oil paint used in the originals.)

During the next class, the children worked on the backgrounds of their paintings, mixing colours to match the original. The background paint had to dry before the foreground could be worked on, so that was considered a day’s work.

Next came the painting of the foreground. The colours here were sometimes more vivid, but not always, and the details of the paintings began to appear.

Diligent work (and some not-as-diligent) resulted in paintings to be proud of.

Here are the final results:

The Gallery

Brown Eyed Boy loves to draw. His favourite subjects are motor vehicles: vans, pickup trucks, transport trucks, race cars...

Recently he has begun adding his artwork to our 'gallery'.

It seems that every day there is something new on the wall.

(Maybe he was feeling left out because he didn't do the same art work his brother and sister did and he had nothing to show in the gallery?)

Greek Art

Last spring, in our last art class of the 2008-2009 school year, the children worked on Greek vases. They learned about the old and new style of art (black on orange, and orange on black) on pottery and began their studies in preparation for working on an actual vase.

These are some of the pictures from the students in the art class:

Then came the process of transferring the drawing onto the vases. The children worked in pairs or threes, according to family, with an old style illustration and a new on each vase. Detailed pictures were painstakingly produced with tiny brushes, dentist's tools, and black paint.

Working in pairs was awkward at times, because it wasn't possible to tilt the vase to get a better angle without warning the other painter, but the children made it work!

Here you can see some of the intricate work that was produced in the old style.

And here is a new style design done by My Girl (soldier and laurel wreaths):

On the reverse is the old-style painting done by Little Man (two Olympic wrestlers):

And a close up of My Girl's soldier:

After taking two spring classes to work on the vases they were put aside for the summer. When we got back together with our Art/History/Nature Study group in the fall, the second class saw a return to the vases. Many were completed during that last session, but there there are a couple of more details to finish on the vase that The Ones I Love worked on, the border design being the main thing, but the result is beautiful already!

Our First Charlotte Mason Co-op Day

(this is a long post - you might like to make yourself a cup of tea before settling in)

For months we've been making plans for this: a Charlotte-Mason style co-op class involving 15 children ages 14 years down to 7 months. Yesterday it happened.

All five participating families are working through Ancient Greece in History, so the first part of our first session was dedicated to making salt-dough maps of that region. This was painstaking work, maybe not a best first-country choice for this experience; picture Greece: its filigreed shoreline, its multitudinous islands, its deep inlets and irregular terrain. Complex and intimidating, but we did it.

We still have to paint the background water, but for now this is what we have accomplished.

The older children stuck with the project much longer than the younger, in fact, Brown-Eyed Boy didn't even attempt to work on the map - he went straight to the room where our friends house their Playmobil toys and we didn't see him for the rest of the morning!

While the older children and the moms completed the maps, the others went to explore the expansive, inviting back yard. This is one of the most interesting yards I've been in - there is a trickling fountain, a rustic see-saw, a little outbuilding which looks like it could double as a small cabin, an inviting deck as well as several seating areas around the grass and ground-cover. Huge trees canopy the yard, offering a venue for climbing, swinging, and hiding.

As some cleaned up the work stations on the deck, others began to set out the pot-luck lunch, a mouth-watering assortment of foods: oatmeal banana muffins, tomato salad, fresh whole-grain bread, cold chicken, fresh strawberries and blueberries, croissants, yogurt, and apple cider, just to name a few of the items shared.

Once everyone had eaten their fill, we gathered the children together, donned our sturdy shoes and backpacks, and struck out for the woods.

The plan was to hike down (literally) to the creek and follow it along until we reached a small glade where we would sit, eat our snacks, and paint the bulrushes there for our nature journals.

Along the way the children were intrigued with the fallen branches and trees, long tree limbs partially blocking the path; the place in the creek bed with iron deposits which were leaching into the water, staining the water in that little area orange; a culvert to explore, rocks to throw: all these things made for slower progress on the route we'd chosen.

And then there was a treasure! On the opposite side of the creek there was a significant natural clay deposit. Within minutes the children had removed their shoes and socks and were wading in the creek, hands filled with the wonderful clay.

The texture had them completely engaged as they squeezed it, dipped it in the water, kneaded it.

It didn't take long to realize that this was an opportunity we needed to embrace. Here we were, in a beautiful setting, with a source of natural clay at our disposal, and one of the moms with us was an artist and a potter!

We abandoned the bulrushes idea and, with no hesitation whatsoever, our dear friend waded into the stream and started teaching the children how to work the clay so it would be the most effective.

They tried a couple of different group projects (a giant caterpillar on a log was one of them) but the variation in the consistency of the clay made it not work too well. Several smaller sculptures were completed: a snake eating a rat, a 'snow'man, and this, done by the art teacher herself:

After the sculpting was complete there was some debate about whether it would be possible to carry out some clay with us. One option was to sacrifice a couple of boys' shirts and use them as bags, but, once we remembered how far we had to walk back, how steep the incline was, and how many little ones were with us, we contented ourselves with two small zip-lock bags as samples.

All too soon it was time to wash off the clay from arms, legs, and faces. Children splashed gently in the stream, hair skimming the surface of the water.

We made it through nearly an hour at the creek with 15 children and no major slips into the water...

...until Little Man reached his runners on the other side of the creek, turned to cross back to the near side, slipped on the clay, and splashed chest deep into to creek, runners still in hand!

After the initial shock was over came laughter and grins, and Little Man made his way to shore!

He was not the only one to walk barefoot for half the return hike, but he was the only one who dripped the whole way!

All in all, a wonderful day, and a great start to our new CM co-op! And definitely worth the 90 minute drive.