Jimmie's Collage » art

Thirteen Ways to Reuse a Page a Day Art Calendar

Jimmie — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:00:00 +0000

2011 Art Calendar

It’s sort of ridiculous how often I’ve mentioned the Metropolitan page a day art calendar on this blog. (Here, here, here, and here.) But I’m crazy about it. I’ve already received my 2012 edition, and it’s packed away on the shelf, awaiting the new year.

That daily dose of beauty helps us keep our momentum with artist studies. Every day brings a chance to review periods of history with the visual reminder of the calendar pages.

Right now we are in the best part of the year as far as the art calendar is concerned. Each page of the calendar holds two dates — one on the front for the first half of the year and another on the back for the second half. That means that every day from July 1 on brings another page that is finished and can be used for art projects.

The only difficult part is choosing which one of the beautiful works of art to use? Front or back?

Here is a list of all the ways you could reuse the pages from a page a day art calendar in your homeschool. They aren’t just art ideas but span language arts and history as well.

choose two pieces to compare and contrast
tell the story you see in the art
use descriptive language to describe what you see in the art
arrange (a select group of) the art in chronological order like a timeline (don’t peek at the dates)
illustrate history notebooking pages
decorate a bedroom or homeschool area
make artist study files for future use
sort (a select group of) art into artistic styles
sort (a select group of) art by artist
add the art to your art notebook
let the art inspire a haiku, limerick, acrostic, or other poem
make your own board games or flashcards
use the art for modpodge projects or for note cards

Many of these ideas will also work with wall calendars, but the page a day calendar has hundreds of pictures to choose from (versus just twelve), all in a convenient size.

If you have your own ideas for reusing an art calendar, please share them here.

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Art Haiku

Jimmie — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:44:58 +0000

I think that my favorite types of lessons are when academic disciplines overlap. I don’t know if it’s the “two-for-one” bargain of it or the way it stimulates connections in the brain, but when a lesson crosses two or more subject areas, I get excited!

Art Inspired Haiku

In this lesson, poetry and art intersect.

The Art

We visited the Impressionist Revolution exhibition at the Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, TN and thoroughly enjoyed it. The museum is so high tech: the audio guide is on an iPod. In fact, we downloaded the free app back at home and referred to it when Sprite did her notebooking followup to the field trip.

The Poetry

Working through A Child’s Introduction to Poetry, we studied haiku. (By the way, these free printable haiku notebooking pages are already posted over at The Notebooking Fairy.)

poetry notebooking

The Inspiration

My idea came from this PDF Art & Haiku. All I had to do was explain the concept and Sprite was off and running. She sketched a small version of her favorite piece from the exhibit and composed a seventeen syllable haiku after the art.

And voila! Art and poetry are both done for the day.

Do you think this is a lesson plan idea you can use? Do you get excited about overlapping subject areas like I do?

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Ancient Greek Art

Jimmie — Fri, 06 May 2011 14:35:08 +0000

For history, we are wrapping up Ancient Greece. One of the supplemental books I added to the Beautiful Feet curriculum is Ancient Greek Art. The art books in this series give a broad overview and always mesh nicely with our history books. As we read through the book and did a couple of the recommended act projects, Sprite took notes on notebooking pages. You can find those in three posts at The Notebooking Fairy, my second blog devoted exclusively to notebooking.

Of course, our visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art reinforced all we had seen in books with real life artifacts. I snapped a shot of Sprite explaining objects to her father. She felt herself quite the expert after studying Ancient Greek Art. I was quite impressed what she retained and credit much of that to our use of notebooking after each reading assignment.

Another plus was seeing objects similar to ones we had seen in our art calendar. Living books (and calendars) are wonderful, worth their weight in gold, but nothing compares to the real thing.

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Feb. 2011 Art for Homeschool Contest

Jimmie — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 13:00:53 +0000

These are Sprite’s two entries in the February 2011 Art for Homeschool Contest. There are some great pieces entered besides Sprite’s.

Please go over and vote (by Feb. 14th) in the People’s Choice award. And be sure to subscribe to that blog so you will know about the next contest deadline.

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Smart Art Review

Jimmie — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 06:37:58 +0000

We have been using a fantastic art resource for the past few weeks – Smart Art: Learning to Classify and Critique Art. I bought it discounted from Prufrock Press since the topic sounded good and the price was right.

I’ve been so pleased with the content, and it came at a perfect time in our art studies. Basically Smart Art is a primer for analyzing art. The first section covers the purpose of a work of art. These are divided into three broad categories– imitationalism (realism), emotionalism, and formalism.

Then in a workbook format, these concepts are introduced:

art elements

line
shape
color
texture
design

design elements

repetition
variation
proximity
focal point
balance
space
dark and light

As you study each concept, you sketch your own examples. And then, my favorite part, you discuss the concept in relation to a work of fine art — real art, not contrived images. Unfortunately the art reproductions included in the book, although full page, are all black and white. For some exercises, such as proximity or balance, the black and white version was not a hindrance. But for others, we used the art books in our library to find a color version of the art. And for more obscure pieces we simply searched the Internet.

Besides the exercises in the book, we enjoyed shuffling through the pages of our art calendar to find good examples of each art or design element.

discussing balance in art

The last section of the book discusses the meaning of a work of art. And although a theme can be subjective, the book does a good job of helping you guess a theme based on the various elements of art and design.

The book is targeted for ages 8-14, and I found it perfect for 11 year old Sprite. We already do daily art narrations for our artist study, and some art terminology has found its way into our narrations. But we had never studied art formally as Smart Art lays it out. The ideas Sprite learned are helping her narrate art with more specific art vocabulary and with new attention to various art designs.

See sample pages from this book at Prufrock Press.

analyzing Cassat's Boating Party

The last few pages of the book brings it all together in a Smart Art Worksheet. This three page document walks you through the purpose of the art, the art elements, the design elements, and the theme. When you are done, you have outlined a thorough analysis of a piece of art. I anticipate using this as the pre-writing stage for a future essay assignment. Sprite really enjoys looking at art in this systematic way and asked if we could use the Smart Art Worksheet often. I think we may add it to our art study work as a once a week activity.

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Egyptian Art — Sculpting

Jimmie — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 06:27:27 +0000

It seems we keep pulling out our carving tools lately.

First it was potato stamp cartouches, now it’s clay sculptures.

I had planned for Sprite to do some drawing in the Egyptian style, but she was more inclined to reproduce a three dimensional object.

I’m flexible. Why not?

She chose the famous Tutankhamen mask.

I didn’t intervene at all. I just gave her the tools. Through trial and error, she learned what was the best order for putting the pieces together. There were a few instances of taking things off and then putting them back on at a later stage in the process.

I love how she hollowed out eye sockets and then put in “eye balls.”

The book pictured here is Ancient Egyptian Art from the Art in History series. We have a few of these titles, and I really like the way they give a concise overview of art in various time periods. They are full of photographs (as an art book really must be) and vocabulary.

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Finding Time for Sketching

Jimmie — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 04:10:24 +0000

I try to keep homeschool simple in the spirit of Charlotte Mason. But Sprite and I have so many ideas, and we are interested in so many things. We want to do it all. Of course, that’s impossible, so we must pick and choose.

One of the ways I am able to include sketching into our homeschool day is directly related to using a literature-rich curriculum. I still read aloud to Sprite quite a bit. This is an area where I part with CM somewhat. She felt that children should read for themselves once able to do so. Of course, I require Sprite to read independently. But some wonderful books are beyond her comfortable reading level. Those are the ones I read to her.

During those reading times, what does Sprite do besides listen? Most often she draws, sketches, or does some sort of craft – origami, walnut shell crafts, etc. I don’t usually require anything particular from her while I read aloud. The choice is hers.

Personally, I cannot draw or paint and concentrate on a audio book. In fact, I find it most distracting when my classmates carry on conversations during my Chinese watercolor lessons. But Sprite has no trouble with accessing the creative side of her brain while she engages in verbal activities.

My answer to finding time for sketching is to use read-aloud time. As I read aloud to her, she works on art. This is homeschool multi-tasking at its best. The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2010 calendar has provided lots of interesting subjects to copy (pictured). I’ve already received my 2011 copy.

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Art for Homeschool November Contest

Jimmie — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

The latest Art for Homeschool Contest is open for voting in the People’s Choice. The theme is America the Beautiful.

Sprite’s entry was inspired by our Yellowstone vacation.

Thank goodness we took that impressive vacation. Otherwise the only “America the Beautiful” association she might make would be TOPS BBQ in Memphis, TN. I admit a pulled pork sandwich is a beautiful thing, but it somehow doesn’t compare with eagles, flags, and buffaloes.

The deadline for the judging is Monday.

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Symmetry Sketches

Jimmie — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:45:13 +0000

One of the sketching tasks in Drawing With Children is to complete the other half of a symmetrical drawing. Mona Brookes calls this mirror imaging, and she includes some of these activities in her warm-ups (see page 67).

As surprising as it may be, the Remembering God’s Awesome Acts curriculum includes several drawing activities. (I need to blog about this amazing book. I love it.)

We did a lantern symmetry project from that resource, and then moved on to the wolf which I got from Art Projects for Kids. (That site says it’s a grade three activity, but of course anyone of any age can use it. I did! Mine is below.)

I thought that the activity was a fabulous practice for both symmetry and for shading, so I created some more of these types of images.

Help yourself! Here is Sprite’s pig sketch.

Here are my symmetry sketches.

A related activity is the Vase/Faces sketch at Betty Edward’s website. She is the author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I’m not sure how this can be, but I happened upon the book in txt or pdf format for free at Scribd. Although I have a copy of this book, I plan to put the PDF on my Kindle for reading while on the go.

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Art Calendar for Review

Jimmie — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 04:06:55 +0000

Remember our page-a -day art calendar? We are finally on the flip side of the pages now that half of the year is gone.

Yesterday we came upon a Greek amphora in the calendar. What a great time to do some review! This year our history focus is ancient civilizations, so we’ll be covering Ancient Greece in a few months. I pulled out Sprite’s Ancient Greece lapbook made in her first grade year.

She laughed at her handwriting, coloring, and writing. It was fun for her (and me) to see her progress over these years by remembering the simplistic way she wrote then. She read through all the minibooks and got a little Ancient Greece review in the bargain.

Sure enough, we found the minibook about Greek pottery. And there was the amphora, defined for us.

We’ve really enjoyed the art calendar, and I think I’m going to go ahead and buy the 2011 one soon. Amazon usually sells out before the new year comes, and I don’t want to miss out. I love it when a tool is such an eclectic mix — art, artist study, history, and geography. There are constant opportunities for review and new learning.

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