I have always loved teaching a Leonardo da Vinci unit study because it covers just about every single academic subject easily. The Renaissance, various science topics like inventions, simple machines, & the human body, and art & artist study are all easy topics to cover while learning about da Vinci. Add some fun research-based learning activities and good books and you have yourself a really fabulous unit study! Get a printable copy of this unit study below. Leonardo da Vinci Unit Study Taking two or three weeks to study the life and impact of da Vinci just might inspire your kiddos to dream big and do hard things. His incredible inventions, discoveries, critical thinking, and ... Read More
Monthly Artist Study Projects and Resources
As a Charlotte Mason homeschooler, artist study has been a constant over the years. While I haven't documented all our studies, I have pulled together several of them here for you. Briefly: How We Do Artist Study Most of the time, we focus on one artist per month in our home. One day each week consists of a different picture study using one piece of art from the artist. On that same day (art day), we will spend time reading about the artist using living literature (affiliate link) and/or trying our hands at a "copycat" art or art using the same styles or media as the artist. That's it. Art and artist study once a week! Our Artist Studies Below you will find links to our picture ... Read More
Michelangelo Artist Study
This post contains affiliate links. Read my entire disclosure policy here. Artist Study of the Month Since Michelangelo's birthday is coming up on March 6th, we're gearing up to focus on him again during this month's artist study. We studied his work once before (several years ago) as part of a mini-unit about Renaissance artists. Our favorite activity then was a reenactment of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. That's an easy activity: Tape some paper to the bottom of a table that you don't mind getting paint on. Make a cozy spot under the table to lay. Grab some paints. Paint a picture on the paper while laying down. Michelangelo Biography and Research ... Read More
Grandma Moses
Grandma Moses, more formally known as Anna Mary Robertson Moses, was a folk artist of the early 1900's who didn't begin painting until her late 70's. Many of her paintings shared the story of her life - scenes from the landscape around her. We have never studied a folk artist before, so we were excited to jump into "new territory" in theme and art techniques! Biography Before we study an artist's work, we try to learn at least a bit about the artist's life and motivations. We always enjoy the Mike Venezia books! The Garden of Praise has a nice biography for children about Grandma Moses that you might like to read, too. And My Audio School has a fun biography to listen to as ... Read More
Charlotte Mason Series #6 – Artists, Composers and Poetry
Welcome back to week 2 of the 10 Days of Homeschooling blog hop! This week is absolutely full of some of the most rich and wonderful learning that comes from a Charlotte Mason style education! You can find the rest of the posts in this series here. Artists, Composers and Poetry Today covers some priceless topics - art, music and poetry - that too many people choose to leave out of their curriculum because they either can't find the time or don't think the material important. I suppose I can see how someone could feel so overwhelmed with "real" schoolwork that they don't find the "extras" important. However, these "extras" pack more academic punch than you might think! Not to ... Read More
Henri Matisse Resources
We spent much of our month with Matisse completing art with scissors since Matisse's later works were often collages or realistic and abstract art constructed from cuttings. The artwork below was actually harder than it looks. I asked the kids to use rulers to measure the desired sized blocks of color for the background. The abstract pieces placed on top were folded, cut and opened so that each piece would be symmetrical. (See, I hide math everywhere!) Henri Matisse Olga's Gallery Warning: There are many nudes! Paintings We Studied I chose these paintings by Matisse because we were studying erosion at the time during nature study. Each of the paintings includes ... Read More
Charles Russell Resources
We've been so immersed in our 1900's history studies, that Charles Russell took a bit of a back seat this month. We did find the time to practice a little horse drawing, though. Enjoy the resources below! Charles Russell About Charles Russell Paintings We're Studying Round-up on the Musselshell Lesson Ideas How to Draw a Horse Drawing Horses ... Read More
Georges Seurat Resources
Seurat is such a fun artist to study! His use of pointillism was the biggest topic during the month, which made for some fun art projects. The painting above was an attempt at recreating an "Alfalfa" style painting (see below) with a mixture of strokes and styles. After using many different tools to create pointillism, we greatly respect how long it must have taken Seurat to finish any of his works created strictly with dots! Georges Seurat Olga's Gallery Paintings We Studied Alfalfa Books We Read Lesson Ideas Pointillism Activity Ideas KinderArt Pointillism ... Read More
Paul Gauguin Resources
Gauguin was an interesting character! I can't claim that he's my favorite artist, but we still enjoyed our time spent with him this month. Self-Portraits Below are the resources that have been in the sidebar. We won't be doing artist or composer study in December. I'll have resources in the sidebar again in January! Paul Gauguin Olga's Gallery Lesson Ideas Pet Still Life Self-Portrait Various Worksheets and a Bio Books We'll Read ... Read More
The Thinker and Other Rodin Fun
We've had a fun month studying Rodin (despite my preference for paintings over sculpture.) I've been rather slow posting our projects, so here are two weeks worth of projects. After studying The Hand of God and other hand sculptures, we completed 2-dimensional abstract hand drawings. The kids simply traced their hands and used at least two different mediums to create an abstract design. I love these! You can see the Ivory soap sculpting we did as one of the projects during our Presidents unit in this post. I didn't get a close-up of the sculptures because they weren't great, but you can see the small squares of Ivory soap in the two overall project pictures. They didn't turn out ... Read More