Day 55: Art DVDs

Last year in July, I wrote about our wonderful DVD program Mike's Inspiration Station. Besides going to church, we had no other plans, so we pulled out the DVDs and drew Goliath. I think the kids did a great job at following directions as good as to their abilities.

Day 48: Paint your own Pottery

So today, we picked up our pottery that we made last week when the grandparents were here for a visit. All three kids could pick out a piece that they would paint. So Munchkin chose a piggie bank pig. Peanut picked an owl - she likes owls. And Coqui found this dragon that goes right along with his love of knights and dragons. For two hours, they painted away and we were not allowed to 'mess' with their art work, at least the two bigger ones. Little Munchkin needed some help but she did alot of the painting on her own. Their creativity can be seen in their work.

The sad part came when we had to leave their treasures behind. Thankfully, it only took a few days for the place to burn it, so today, we could come and pick them up. Et voila:

Day 13: Draw and Write through history

 

Sometimes it is hard to include everything into our schedule. I mean there were literally 11 subjects on Coqui's agenda today. But we started off with his two favorites: history and art. And because he loves them so much, they take a lot of time. (Which leaves less time for the (what Mami thinks) more important subjects like Math and English.)

He loves history, so we read three different stories about Ancient Rome; all really exciting as they were about gladiators, Roman soldiers, wars, and such. Super interesting. We love our curriculum: Story of the world (read my post how history comes alive in our house). So there are coloring pages, map work, and crafts, maybe some additional reading, and almost always a lapbook that I add. Recently, I found this book: Draw and Write through history book 2.
Here is a picture from their site:

We totally love these books, even better than the Write, Draw, Now series, which is all about drawing animals and learning about their different habit. They are not bad books, but my history lover prefers these history books. We have used it for our Greek lessons as well - you can see it here.

If you want to try a free lesson, you can find it under their link: Free lesson, or just click here. Not every child reacts well to this kind of instructions, but my want-to-be-perfect child finds it a lot easier to copy a "perfect" picture than trying to imagine his own. It works for him and builds up his confidence, and my prayer is that one day he will step away and start drawing his own imaginations.

Our First Salt Dough Map

As we are continuously studying Ancient History, we included some Geography as well. And which continent is perfect when you just studied Ancient Egypt, Joseph, and Moses: Africa.

Here is a picture of the final map:

The kids had so much fun making this, they didn't realize that they were learning and applying what they had learned previously. I think it came out really good.

You will need a pizza box (old or new), a printer to print the maps, a sharpie, the ingredients for the salt dough, paints, and

I found the recipe for the salt dough online. They are many out there, but we used this one - their Africa map looked intriguing enough for us. Before we could start, we needed to find a map big enough for our outline, I printed it on four pages from this website. Then we needed a physical map of Africa, which I printed from this page. We cut out the big map, taped it together, and then traced the outline onto the pizza box. We tried to be as accurate as possible.

Next, we mixed all the ingredients together:

Coqui really doesn't like to get his hands dirty! He is still smiling here, but soon he had enough and Peanut and I finished mixing it all together.

The next part was so cool: to see Africa take shape in front of us.

Honestly, they did all this by themselves, they just needed some help with the rivers.

 When the map was done and some dough leftover, they wanted to add some African 'things', so they sculpted a pyramid, a snake, and a volcano.

 The map needed to dry for at least a day, but we had to wait for two days to get back and paint it. The weather was nice, so we headed outside for this.

We really enjoyed this and can't wait to make another salt dough map of a different continent.

Draw and Write through history

We have been studying Ancient Greece since mid November. It's taken us a long time due to a vacation, the holidays, and the new year; there were a lot of school-free days. Lol. So here we are, almost done with this unit. Coqui loves history and art. It was a cold day, so we gathered around the fire place in the living room and spread all over the floor to do our learning.

I recently found out about these books called Draw and Write through history.
They are similar to the Draw Your World books - also called Draw, Write, Now. My history lover and I feel in love with the book that we bought, which is of course about Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. We used it before, but today was a great day to pull it back out. So Coqui and I sat down and drew this Ancient Greek soldier below.

Can you guess who's is who's?
OKay, so the original is all the way to the right, that is pretty clear. No one can draw this well in our family. I did not bad, but some of my lines were off. I did not correct them to show my trying-to-be-perfect perfectionist that it is okay to mess up. Of course, he hated his picture. But I am proud that he persevered through the end, even though half way through copying the drawing he wanted to give up. I think he did a fantastic job, but I am also a little bias.

Drawing with a Master

One of our favorite subjects is Art. Years ago, I bought this DVD series called Mike's Inspiration Station from Hearts at Home Curriculum. They had a deal, and it looks like they still do, and I needed a DVD-based curriculum rather than books. It is meant to encourage the children to copy what they see on the screen. An added bonus is that there is always a Scripture with the lesson, so it is a bit Christian influenced.

Since we put the DVDs on for the first time, we were hooked. It is totally low key, calm and slow enough for the kids to draw or paint along with 'Mike'. When they need time to catch up, I simply stop the DVD for a few minutes. It's actually pretty easy for the kids to follow along and the end result looks pretty good for their ages.

Here is a bird that they did :

I think they both did a good job.

Skeletons and spiders

Last year, we were part of a local co-op that stopped during the summer. The mom that ran it was not planning on restarting it for this semester, very much to our disappointment. So we did without...... (It was sad because my kids always had so much fun there. Coqui had a (boy) friend there, and Peanut opened up so much there, just by watching everyone else.

Because we wanted to stay friends with her and her kids, occasional play dates took place over the summer, and on one of those a few weeks ago, she invited us back to her house. So for the past two weeks, we are back at our co-op - and we are very happy about that.

Due to the fact that 'some' families celebrate Halloween, our themes have been skeletons and spiders. First week, we talked about the different parts of the human skeleton and its functions. We read a book and did a craft.

Coqui's skeleton made out of different kinds of noodles

Peanut's skeleton

For our second week, we started ASL with the kids - which they really liked. They learned the entire alphabet in sign language. Even Miss Peanut stayed focused enough to learn a few letters herself.
Then we read a story. That was followed by several art and science projects. At the end, we did Spanish.

Make a spider out of cotton swabs and Styrofoam ball

Make a spider web out of rubber bands, and then out of strong and straws, and in the back yard out of some fabric material. They had lots of fun doing it.

I can not tell you how happy I am to be back at her house and do fun learning together with our friends. Her and her husband are great teachers. Her kids love my kids, they get along very well (most of the time). And we always include recess, and if we can't go outside, we do music with dancing inside. It's so wonderful to be back there. 

Coqui's Art Work

Lately, and maybe because of the art co-op, Coqui has taken to art like a maniac. He needs to do 'projects' all the time, 'write' stories instead of eating lunch, and draw pictures to send to relatives. Constantly. I don't mind, I love it. Here is a selection of his art that stroke me:

 Here, Coqui drew Daddy while driving in the car.

 Coqui drew Mema's backyard with the big pool and Abuelo jumping in from the diving board.

What I thought interesting about this one, is that he wrote WonderPets (which is a cartoon in TV) backwards, telling me that it's a secret message. Then he drew their ship that can fly....

 This was a picture for his sister - that's why it's in girl colors!

I am not sure when he started to draw his people with square heads - I find that bizarre yet fascinating.