living books

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,…

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…

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…

Rousseau’s Jungle Paintings

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…

Paul Cezanne

Paul Cezanne Artist Study Resources Olga’s Gallery The Mount Sainte-Victoire Still-life with Apples House and Trees Boy in a Red Waistcoat Lesson Ideas Cezanne Still-life Math Lesson for Older Students Cubism Lesson Books We’ll Read

Toddler sit in dirt and writes in a nature journal

24 Must Read Toddler Books

Toddler Books Enjoyed by Eli The toddler years go by so quickly!  I love toddlers with their inquisitive minds that soak up information like sponges.  My biggest piece of advice for taking advantage of all that learning energy – read, read, read!  Living literature, of course – yes, it even matters in the earliest of…

Van Gogh Resources

Van Gogh Artist Study Resources Vincent Van Gogh Lesson Ideas Sunflowers Starry Night Almond Tree in Blossom Blossoming Almond Tree I chose the three paintings above for the purpose of learning to draw trees this spring as they begin to blossom. Books We Read Here’s the last art/nature project of the Van Gogh month.  After…

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers

After reading Camille and the Sunflowers, I had the kids try their hand at recreating Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” using an idea from Deep Space Sparkle. They turned out GREAT!! The directions in a nutshell: Use a pencil to draw a vase, table line and the flowers. Go over all or most pencil lines with a…

Renoir

Pierre August Renoir Artist Study Resources Picking Flowers Websites To Visit Biography for Kids Renoir Gallery *Warning: Preview these as Renoir painted many nudes! Books To Read We have LOVED Renoir!  In this week’s lesson, the children chose Renoir’s painting below (Oarsmen at Chatou) to try to replicate. Mahayla’s Caleb’s