Easy Fine Art:Van Gogh

After last week's art-scapades, I decided to continue our art education. The middle and highschooler both take a weekly art class but the first grader isn't this year.

On the right of the pic is my middle schooler's interpretation and recreation of Starry Night. On the upper left is the first grader's original relief painting in the works.

It was very simple. First, I searched Pinterest for inspiration. Then I found a few very short videos on the work of Van Gogh on youtube.

The first grader watched the video then I allowed him to recreate one of Van Gogh's works and create his own using an easy relief method.




Draw on art paper any design with a white crayon. Using water color paints, paint over your hidden design. The crayon will produce blank spaces under the water color as a relief painting.

This was his final piece, an interpretation of Van Gogh's Starry Night. I also printed out a free (found online) Van Gogh coloring page and he wrote a couple sentences of facts he learned about the artist underneath.

Above is the version I did with a student at work. I made all the water color marker lines and also crayon lines in white (that you can't see) and in black for the building. She used a wet paint brush to blend the colors together. We work on a lot of fine motor skills together during her sessions. This also entails learning and moving the paint brush from left to right and up and down.

Easy Fine Art: Matisse

Matisse inspired Valentine art.

I subscribed to a few inspiring and informative home-educating blogs. The various blogs are a great resource to free printables, activities and ideas for all sortts of subjects. Recently one suggested a Valentined theme fine art unit. Easy peasy!

The art piece was using the style of Matisse's cut out art. Using water coor markers, the first grader drew geometric shapes (squares) and colored them in, later going over them with a brush and water to create a little water color effect. He cut out heart shapes from construction paper and glued those on top. Voila!

I found printable versions of Henry Matisse's art work for him to color. Youtube has become my new BFF as well. I am amazed at how many great educational videos can be found. I chose a few different but short videos about Matisse and his work. The first grader watched those and then wrote a few biographical sentences about what he learned.

We paste all these pieces into a spiral bound notebook (my attempt at organization) to keep them all in one place. This is working well when we have a Learning Record meeting, as I can show our Educational Specialist our portfolio (book) and tear out a page to give her as a sample.

Art Class Field Trip

The middles high school art class (taught by my oldest son) took a field trip tonight. The class worked on contour drawing. They all walked a block to the local coffee shop, which was packed for the evening, stood around and drew sketches of patrons or whatever else caught their  eye.

While they were there, various artists did spoken word or performed music. The final act of the night was an awesome indie band that we all thought was really, really good. It was a great way to end my work week and a great way to mix up art class.

Art Class

My kiddos have all taken art class for years now. My oldest started at this particular studio during highschool and is now an instructor there.

My youngest started taking art lessons last year and unfortunately, I just can't fit it into our schedule this year.

I feel bad about it but it is what it is. In the mean time, the middles are still taking classes. This is one of Bird's latest pieces.

I love everything about it! I think art is so important for children (well, for everyone really) no matter what form it's practiced.

I believe this is a mix of chalk pastel and water color. 

Owl Art

I'm sorry, I just can't stop! There are so many great ideas out there and he needs to do art too, right?

This project used water color, tempra and acrylic paints. He also used various tools to accomplish the painting. 

The truth is, every.single. paintbrush we have ever owned is lost. Magically disappeared!

I remembered I had these gigantic pompoms and a co-worker used small pompoms to paint with when she didn't have a paintbrush either...so voila! I discovered that the large pompoms actually give him a lot more control over the paint. Plus he can cover more space with only a few moves.

Later, for the fine details he used a small brush (I ran out to Michael's to purchase a pack!). We did not have brown paint so I attempted to create it myself, mixing orange and green initially...that didn't go over very well. After adding too much black, a bit of white and more orange...we ended up with a color akin to a very grey-ish green, possibly brown if we're hopeful, sort of shade.

Monster Inspiration

Last week during Sam's cognitive testing, I took advantage of our time at the library to work with Kurtis uninterrupted or distracted by home life.

His initial assignment was to choose two monsters from a few coloring pages I had printed, color them and then write a story about his characters. With creative writing assignments I do not focus on spelling and offer very little help. The point is for him to create the sentences himself and write them down.

I had him cut the monsters out, while I cut the writing paper and glue them into his spiral note book. The notebooks are my latest attempt at staying organized. I print a lot of worksheets and various other items used in my teaching, off the internet. This creates a lot of loose leaf paper that can easily become misplaced.

Now, my new plan, is to either do the work activities and projects directly on the pages or to paste the worksheets on the pages themselves. When we go to our next LR meeting, all he has to bring is his notebook for each subject and we can choose a page from it directly and turn it in as a work sample.

I think this will also make a great portfolio/journal/record of his year. That is what I am imagining and hoping anyway. Haha. Loose leaf papers and even work books seem to disappear or get misplaced often. Yes, we have used three-ring binders but the challenge for my students is actually putting the work IN TO the binder. I thought it was simple but I guess not. haha.

This seems to be a potentially easy plan to keep and follow through on...at least for me. 

More Owl Fun

Continuing our owl theme, I found an owl craft...finger puppets!

I allowed Kurtis to use the glue gun. He was so careful because he was afraid to get burned. I reassured him that it's not as bad as it seems and once he gets burned it will be ok because then he will know.

Sure enough, he accidentally burned himself and he agreed that it wasn't so bad. That released him from the fear of being burned. 

I didn't have any googly eyes so I did a quick run to Dollar Tree! (I spend way too much time & money in that place--but SO worth it!!!) Of course they had them. I used felt I already had, which it only needed a few scrap pieces. I may or may not have had more fun than him but hey, at least we got something done together, right? I suppose I can count this as art? Will it still count as science, since it's an owl? I'm not sure. haha. Definitely fine motor skills!

I also did a test run of an owl writing project with a tutoring client. It went over well and I'm going to use it with him later...I'll share when I do. 

Field Trip: MOLA

Moonlight Myth

In the middle of a heat wave, all I could think after church was finding the coolest, literally teh coolest, place to go for some free AC. I saw a friend's post about this local art museum (that I always forget exists) having a special hispanic festival to go with their current exhibit, so I grabbed the kids and headed over. 

Feeling inspired!

There were vendors and special performances in the outdoor space of the museum. We enjoyed observing all the art on display. I've included pictures of a couple of my favorites. Admission was free which was a great bonus! 

It was a great way to not only keep cool, but expose my middles to art and enjoy some time away from home unlike our usual Sunday afternoons. I'm really glad we went. I would love to check out more museums regularly but I simply forget! 

Water Color Pencil

This guy says he doesn't like art class. It requires  him to sit and concentrate for way longer than he's used to. At the same time, another mom-friend and I walk to the beach.

He rushes through his pieces and around the 1 hour mark, can barely contain himself. He really should be in a 45 minute class for his age but there isn't one at this time.

His siblings are in the class at the same time so he must endure. He does, overall. I'm proud of him for that. I am also proud of the work he is doing. He used to rush and scribble scrabble to get it over with. His art skills have improved dramatically since the beginning.

I love this kid!

Welcome to year 16.

Of home-educating, that is. That is quite a career span if you ask me, not that you were. I apologize for not writing..we experienced a pretty unexpected and crazy turn of events, in our family, less than a month after my last post here.

My husband and I separated and we still are. This is a major, disappointing, life altering, scary, crisis inducing event to happen, to put it mildly. Especially in a home with four kids, three of whom are still under age and a mother who has primarily been a stay-at-home-mom, not much of an income earner.

God is still good. We are still home-educating and have been doing well. I have put in 15 years as an home-educator, if I got paid actual money for this, I think I'd have earned some tenure by now or something, right? These days, a 15 + year career span is still worth something, isn't it?

This year Birdy is in 6th grade and Sammy is in 8th. Two middle-schoolers. Kurtis is preschool. We continue to be relaxed over all. I finally found a curricula I love, a few years ago and have stuck with it. I'll tell you about it later. I supposed I should be teaching Kurtis to read this year. I suppose.

He loves and I continue to encourage him, to play with his abacus. We're about one month into this 16th school year now. It's going well so far. Sammy finished a novel already; The Giver. Which is HUGE for him. And he read one of the Hunger Games this summer too. Birdy is still attracted to the easier books and feels proud to breeze through them in a day. She was intrigued over hearing her brother talk about The Giver and started it herself.

Their first art class of the year was Monday and we had to miss because my car battery unexpectedly died. Sammy has started football season. The verdict is still out if they will take guitar lessons again this year. I signed them up for history classes at Knott's Berry Farm. Sounds totally fun to me. They aren't sure, so I only registered for one, as a trial. I hope they like it.

Last year ended strong and peacefully, despite the challenges we were faced with. I expect this year to go even better. So far, so good.

Student of the Month

This is the face of a young man that has put in a lot of extra academic hours! (like working through summer and holidays) Via tutoring and regular academic work. Some of you may not know this but my son, this handsome fella here, has a learning disability.

We are blessed with an amazing friend (and pastor's wife) that has been volunteer tutoring Sammy for the past 2? 3 years? She was the one who unofficially diagnosed him with the learning disability to begin with. Her heart is so devoted to serving God that when He told her to help Sam--she did not hesitate. She has put in her own time and energy to not only feed his mind, but his soul.

I haven't written much about it yet but our current academic adventure involves home educating through a public charter school. We haven't always done this (but we've always home schooled) but the past 4 or 5 years, it's been a good fit for us. We meet with an Education Specialist every 20 days to turn in work samples and fill the ES in on what we have been doing.

This year she started awarding a Student of the Month from one of the families she over sees. This time it was Sammy. She told him such nice and sweet things; how she had seen so much improvement in his work, how he has worked so hard and she recognizes it.

What a blessing. She made this award and gave him a full size of his favorite candy bar: Three Musketeers.

I am so proud of him and grateful for the help he has received.

Here's one of his most recent watercolors. He personalized it by adding the ear phones. Pretty creative, huh?

Paper Marbling

One of Sammy's ancient cultures lessons included marbling paper as an art lesson.  It was very easy.

You add water to a flat container. Then you place a dot of paper on top and squeeze drops of ink paint on the dot. The paint will slowly spread across the surface of the water. When you have added the colors you want, you gently place your sheet of paper on top, wait a few seconds and then lift it up. the designs are one of a kind and not exactly repeatable.

It was actually very fun to do because every design is so different. It was fun to mix the paint colors and see what develops. That is ONE of the joys of home educating....all the fun YOU get to have as a parent.

Marbled papers can be used for all sorts of crafts and projects. The middles cut small sized pieces of paper to use as Artist Trading Cards. (they are about the size of a standard trading card, cut from various art papers) You could use the marbled papers as stationary, journal or book covers. Even background & decorative papers for scrapbooking! So many possibilities.

Paper Mache Pumpkin

This month the middles (4th & 6th grader) tried paper mache for the first time. They created pumpkins. I thought they would find this craft fun and easy. As usual we needed to wing it.

The process involves inflating a balloon and covering it with strips of starched tissue paper. There wasn't ANY orange tissue paper at the store, believe it or not. So I purchased orange paper napkins instead. They tore them into strips but did not take apart the layers. I think it could have been smoother if they did. Once the paper is dry, they drew a face with a black sharpie and then the balloon is popped or deflated.

I think they came out adorable!!!

(even though we only got a pic of one)

Weekly Wrap-Up

Whew! What a week!

We spent one night in ICU w/ a dear friend, while the kiddos were home with Nana.  Another night we went back to the ER to drop of a boat-load of snacks. I know how long those hospital days & nights can be. What does this have to do w/ home-educating? Well, it's LIFE, our life IS our education.  learning to care about & FOR people, is the most important lesson, right?

Then the middles had to miss dance class-I hate that but I had class and the daddy had a call-back.  Again, another life lesson.  Priorities, sometimes you have to sacrifice what *you* want for the good of the whole family.  Daddy needs to go to call-backs because that is how he supports us.  No call back, no work, no support, NO dance class! Birdy really seemed to understand with out me having to even explain it.  I was working it out in my head, a loud and I mentioned I could miss my own class & Bird piped up: "No! NO way--you can NOT miss class! It's very important." How sweet is that?

Bird had to draw a map of the world, paying attention to labeling each continent and ocean.  For some reason, her hand drawn map produced a North America that was way bigger than the continent of Africa! I found a free printable blank map online and had her color and label that one as well.

We ordered the next math level for S from Teaching Textbooks.  He also wrote grammar sentences and labelled them according to their punctuation. Both of them need to move faster through their history & science portions of their curriculum or we'll be working late through summer!!!

Last weekend Lil E was a camp counselor for the youth group so that accomplished quite a few hours for his 'volunteerism' elective. He constructed and turned in his resume for the internship position @ the art studio. I hope he gets it! He also continued to work on his grammar & is persevering through Chemistry still....he's also doing an online Film class elective....in honor of that we took a field trip to FIDM to see their museum exhibit of movie costumes. They had way more costumes than they had a few years ago, last time we went.  It was completely fabulous.

There is a park connected to it, so after the museum we hung out & the youngers played and ran around.  Then we enjoyed a gourmet lunch from a high end 'lunch truck'! lol It was super delicious.

Masterpiece

Aren't these great? The three *students* take art classes locally.  I adore the owner and instructor of the studio. And my kiddos produce these great looking pieces! The older has been working on a mural, in the studio, the last few months. He's going to apply for an internship there.  I know he's really hoping to get it. 

I am so glad we learned of this studio. They have learned so much in their classes.  I wish I had a giant wall to display all their work!

Japanese Gardens

We haven't gone on a field trip for way too long. Today turned out to be an excellent day to go, the weather was very cooperative. Warm, actually, after so long of being chilly. I wanted the ktbunch to see where I go to school, as well as how FAR I have to walk from my car to class, every day. LOL

The University has a lovely Japanese Garden we haven't been to in years plus an art gallery I thought they would also enjoy. S & Birdy especially LOVED feeding the Koi fish. The garden itself is rather small and K was over due for a nap, which makes for an over-active and under-obedient toddler.  Needless to say we didn't stay very long. I think we can take another trip if we arrive earlier, when K is more calm and willing to walk around instead of wanting to *run*, *jump* and *climb* on everything.

We could not take any pictures in the art gallery.  We could not even carry in our back packs. There were a few students there that seemed to run the place.  They were friendly and pleasant.They even kindly warned us of some "adult content".  I appreciated their thoughtfulness toward my children. However, they literally followed us around the place and that made me feel very anxious and nervous.  It is a small gallery so it wasn't subtle.  

At one point, I had S & Bird stand close to a piece of art work to compare how they viewed it, to standing farther away.  before I could have them step back, one of the students told me/them, we needed to be at least 18in away from the art pieces. Ok. You could not even read the plates describing the work from that far back! I tried very hard not to feel perturbed by that.

I wanted to have a picnic on campus and show them more of the fountains but they were extra-hungry.  Besides, once they heard it was free FRY day at Chick-fil-a...they had a one track mind. Over all, it was a well needed and nice change of pace.

I think we all left feeling inspired.

Introspective Exercise

I had my middles do a collage exercise.  I wasn't sure if they would understand the concept but again, guilty of underestimating them.  The idea is to create a collage in a designated, short amount of time, that represents you.  Or represents how you see yourself anyway.

It was so neat and surprising to see what they came up with.  They gave me a lot of insight into their hearts and minds.  It was interesting to really take a look at how they view themselves.  Some of their choices were surprisingly deep and others were predictably funny...and really honest.

 The 10 year old

5th Grade

The 8 year old

3rd grade

I was really blown away by their introspection.  They included their personality strengths as well as their weaknesses.  I can't believe how much credit we DON'T give the, as far as how much they understand and how well they know themselves.    

Supplies Needed
1 sheet of cardstock each 
magazines
glue sticks


Each child was given a sheet of card stock.  Instructions were: choose pictures (or words) from the magazines (tear out--no scissors needed) that represent themselves.  Glue  pictures onto the card stock sheet. Afterward they were given time to explain their finish product.


I only gave them about 10 or 15 minutes to tear out the pictures and glue them on....otherwise they become too distracted with the magazines. :-)

Chalk Art Contest

The kids have been taking art lessons with a fabulous studio, compliments of the Charter School. The owner Vicky is also fabulous and her passion for art is inspiring.

She encouraged the students to create a design and participate in a local sidewalk chalk art contest.  Oldest was lead design artist for his team.  There were two teams from the studio, older teens and younger students.They all got fabulous prizes like admission tix to the local aquarium and oldest received a family admission to a local art museum.  The judges chose oldest design. Of course I was proud!!! His design will be used on posters and as the logo for the park's festival next year.

The theme was Good Neighbors, Strong Community

Oldest design was inspired by the photo of the men raising the flag at Iwo Jima.  I want to make it into a quilt.

This is the design the middles helped create.  They did a fabulous job.  Their art has really taken off since starting these classes.  I am always amazed at the quality they are able to produce.  I want to frame and hang every single one they make!

Free Art Lessons

I randomly found this link w/ art lessons for kids.  It looks pretty good and you can search by grade level which is always helpful, right? "Incedible Art Lessons"  It also states which standards are met by each lesson. That is SO helpful.

Speaking of art, oldest is still really enjoying his art classes.  I'm so glad we found this studio and it became an approved vendor w/ the school.  I am hoping they can help him prepare some samples to apply at Ryman again.  He's enjoying it so much he wants to continue w/ classes through the summer.  I am also hoping that the middles can begin lessons at this studio next year as well.

There are so many opportunities and so little time. happy sigh.

I found some art prints in my hutch of madness aka: where I now keep the majority of school supplies and curricula.  I am going to make a definite effort to do a better job of incorporating fine art  into our curricula next year. 

The Getty Museum

I HIGHLY recommend this museum! It is FREE, only $10 for parking! I will post/add more pix later. THe chillers even got to sketch works of art, paintings & sculptures. The place is huge, the outdoor garden is lovely & we didn't even get a chance to see the outdoor sculpture garden. The artwork was amazing!