Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Artist Study

I've learned to keep faith in some of my homeschool materials for more than one year. Even when we haven't used something over the space of a year, sometimes opportunities pop up later.

I bought a deck of cards called Go Fish for Renaissance Artists last year. The intention was to have the kids view art from one particular artist per term and to be able to choose one of these cards as an art postcard to put in their Book of Masterpieces. (I had also bought nice photo albums, one for each, to store pictures of their favorite pieces of art. The Book of Masterpieces idea - and much of our curriculum - comes from Charlotte Mason Help.)


We did do this a few times, with Rafael Sanzio, Norman Rockwell, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Xander never really enjoyed it. In hindsight, maybe he just didn't like the newness of the experience or being required to do it. When we looked at art last week, he had insightful comments to make about the texture of the brushstrokes in the paintings.

Fast forward several months. I got hold of a cheap set of Carmen Sandiego DVDs and Nick proceeded to fall in love with them. Thanks to Carmen Sandiego, he loves talking about Egypt, the Sphinx, George Washington, and the Mona Lisa. He can pick out the Mona Lisa from a book of paintings.

Today, I realized I hadn't gotten out this deck of art cards in a long time. I went through them with Nick really briefly, who loved lots of them. I allowed him to pick his favorites to put in his Book of Masterpieces. Two were by Leonardo da Vinci. Nick and I were both equally excited to see (remember) that the Mona Lisa was one of the cards.

And on the couch, Xander sat looking at Visions of Camelot: Great Illustrations of King Arthur and His Court for his art study. I picked it up this summer thinking he would like it. We are studying medieval times this year, so it will fit in nicely. Now, looking at it again, I realize that N.C. Wyeth is one of the artists featured. I had also picked up a copy of N.C. Wyeth's Pilgrims for him for both art study and history study. We just read about the Pilgrims in our A Child's History of the World.






Now I see we can combine the two books for a more in-depth study of an artist. Serendipity is happening!

1 comment:

  1. I thought I commented earlier? Been that kind of day (boys are just now finishing up homework at 9:10p.m. SIGH. Anyway, earlier I commented how nice it was when everything comes together. Now, I'm back to say I awarded your blog the Liebster award b/c I really do enjoy reading it :)

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