kidding around

I remember growing up, Tuesday was my very favorite day. Tuesday was Art day. Tuesday was also “Happy Days” and Laverne and Shirley” at night on TV!!

Well in our house, once Thursday hits, the kids are all crazy knowing that the next day is ART! No pressure on me.

Last Spring when I was bouncing the idea to homeschool in my head, I stumbled upon this book and I began to dream about having fun teaching my kids (of course, I can’t just teach art…history, language arts,math and science have to fit in there!)! It has helped me to use it as a spring board for teaching all 3 kids. I’ve looked at curriculum and was really tempted to buy it! I mean, how nice would it be to have projects and art history lessons already provided?

I decided to start off the year with the kids learning about different types of portraits. I hope to take them on a scavenger hunt to the Art Institute of Chicago and make it all come alive. I had the kids fill out their portrait charts with descriptions on the back. I’ll show you the completed charts later this week.

My ultimate goal is to give the kids projects that focus on materials, an element of art, and no “pre-conceived” ideas on what is NICE, GOOD, or “DOES IT LOOK REAL”? I hope that my kids can adopt a real freedom in creating art, but also appreciate the technique, time period or artist being taught.

Anyway, I have found great ideas from this website and decided to use this lesson as our first portrait project. Their focus was to use simple geometric shapes, bright colors and not to be concerned with looking realistic (which can be such a challenge!).

We all gather around the dining room table and have so much fun working together. Listening to music (usually classical) and often working in silence. The creative juices are really flowing that we are all pretty focused…the silence is so lovely and meditative.

Here we are…the members of “Shackelbird Academy” (the name my kids affectionately call their school…I am Mrs. Shackebird.).

I better play a bit of a “blog catch up” before we start thinking Christmas is just around the corner (which it is not!). There’s STILL Thanksgiving, and Penny reminds me that this is the month we are to be thankful. I like that girl.

Anyway, my kids love LOVE love Halloween. They love figuring out their costumes and of course the candy. But to be honest, the candy loses it’s luster pretty quick and I end up dumping much of the non-chocolate stuff.

Enjoy the photos. The extra cutie is my 4 year old niece Tizzy. It’s tradition to go trick or treating with her and then come home to a festive dinner. We all love it.

This coming week, I’ll be sure to share some of the artwork the kids and I are doing…we are having a ball and look forward to our Fridays filled with art.