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Thursday, May 24, 2012

Rousseau Resources

Posted by Cindy on September 29, 2009

We have LOVED our time spent with Rousseau!

Henri Rousseau Artist Study Resources

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Olga’s Gallery

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Landscape with Cattle

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View of Bridge Sevres

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The Football Players

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Monkeys in a Jungle

Lesson Ideas

Princeton Online – Several Ideas

KinderArt – Fantasy Jungle

Lesson Plan Page – Stained Glass

Books We Read

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Don’t forget to sign up for the giveaway that takes place bright and early Thursday, October 1st!

Rousseau’s Jungle Paintings

Posted by Cindy on September 26, 2009

I am loving Henri Rousseau’s style.  It’s somewhat of a folk style with lots of bright colors.  Combine that with whimsical scenes and it makes me smile.  So many of the artists we’ve studied have been too serious for me, but the lighter side of Rousseau has revived my artist’s eye!

Rousseau spent many days studying, sketching and painting exotic plants while visiting huge greenhouses that housed plants and trees from all over the world.  These plants inspired him to paint jungle scenes.  In most of his jungle scenes, you’ll find animals or people hiding in the midst of the plants.  Rousseau would get his inspiration and models for many of those additions as he looked at photographs from magazines.  To look at his paintings, you’d think he spent a lot of time in jungles, but not so!

Surprise

Fight Between a Tiger and a Lion

Two Monkeys in a Jungle

The Waterfall

Here are Mahayla and Caleb’s attempts at a Rousseau jungle painting…

We actually tried to pick leaves that looked jungle-like and roll over them with painted brayers to make prints, but it didn’t work very well.  Instead, the kiddos just decided to paint with brushes.

Paul Cezanne

Posted by Cindy on August 31, 2009

Paul Cezanne Artist Study Resources

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Olga’s Gallery

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The Mount Sainte-Victoire

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Still-life with Apples

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House and Trees

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Boy in a Red Waistcoat

Lesson Ideas

Cezanne Still-life

Another Still-life Idea

Math Lesson for Older Students

Cubism Lesson

Books We’ll Read

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Ending our Month Spent with Wildflowers

Posted by Cindy on August 28, 2009

I admit that wildflowers are quite possibly my favorite of all nature studies.  I’m always in awe of God’s creativeness, beauty and majesty through such delicate little things like wildflowers.  I’m also amazed at how each season presents me with new flowers that I’ve never noticed before – each with awesome characteristics that are different from any other flower.

A field of wildflowers can move me, while a single wildflower observed closely makes me marvel at the constant, yet diverse design that makes a flower a flower.  And to think that wildflowers are “planted by God” reminds me that He cares about me enough to bring me flowers!

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Last week, we took a very up-close and personal look at wildflowers through comparisons and dissection.  There was no long nature walk involved – only long enough to collect several flower samples to bring back inside.  Since the yard wasn’t off limits for picking, the kiddos brought in a couple of flowers that aren’t considered wild.  No matter, it made for a great opportunity to discuss the difference between the two!

The first activity was to compare two completely different flowers for similarities and differences.  This is another of the notebooking pages that comes with the Wonderful Wildflowers NaturExplorers unit.

The second activity was flower dissection to identify all the parts of a flower.

We own a very old dissection kit that made the dissection not only easy, but exciting for the kids.

We were able to see the ovules (eggs) in the ovary!

We were able to see the ovules (eggs) in the ovary on this hollyhock (not a wildflower).

Eli always gets in on the action!

The third activity was drawing the cross-section of a flower and labeling all the parts.

And the final activity was to complete a watercolor still-life of wildflowers.  We have been studying Cezanne, who painted several still-life works, so this tied art and nature study together quite well.  And to get composer study in the mix, we listened to a CD of Chopin (our composer of the month.)

“Wildflowers in the Rain”

Artist Study – Paul Cezanne

Posted by Cindy on May 11, 2009

Our Cezanne study…

Paul Cezanne

 

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Olga’s Gallery

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The Mount Sainte-Victoire

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Still-life with Apples

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House and Trees

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Boy in a Red Waistcoat

Lesson Ideas

Cezanne Still-life

Another Still-life Idea

Math Lesson for Older Students

Cubism Lesson

Books We’ll Read

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