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ExploreArt As always, this site is under construction =) I have a lot of art projects to put on the web this summer for children and teachers to try. Join me here often. Blessings, Connie LESSONS CHART Click on the lesson chart to start!
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I have found wonderful sites on the web that you can use for additional art fun and games. We will incorporate some of these into our weekly lessons. When I refer to the site you can just click here for the direct link!
Other Sites to Check Out For Homeschooling Needs:
If you would like to ask me a question or make a suggestion please feel free to e-mail! If you have thoughts, links or art books to sell then we ask you to please share with the rest of the community using our new message board!
Artist of the Week: Pablo Ruiz Picasso Around 1912 Picasso with a couple other painters of the time developed a new form of cubism which came to be known as synthetic cubism. They started using color again in their paintings. His earlier paintings were a style called analytical cubism and they looked dull or drab because of the colors used. Picasso later started adding wallpaper and other materials to the canvas. Thus the art form collage was invented! Remember to check out your local library and read more about Picasso. Site of the Week |
Additional sites on Picasso: Pablo Picasso,
Yahoo!-Arts:Art History:Artists:Picasso,Pa,
Word of the Week: Collage: an art form in which bits of objects, as newspaper, cloth, pressed flowers, etc are pasted together on a surface in incongruous relationship for their symbolic or suggestive effect; any collection of various unrelated bits and parts, as in a photomontage. Here is a site full of collages for you to look at: The Wonderful Reality of Collages
Art Project: This week we will be making our own Picasso Collage!
You will need: Old magazines or pictures that you can cut up, one piece of construction paper, glue and scissors. Extras that you can use in your picture if you want to could be odds & ends scraps from outside or inside. These can be added to the collage to show a background. You could put different pieces together to make things like chairs, grass, etc. by using such items like buttons, dried flowers, dried corn, sand paper and anything else you can think of.
Directions: Cut out people or faces from your magazines. Cut the people or faces in half or even more pieces. Rearrange the cut pieces together on your piece of construction paper until you have a collage of faces or people. You can put them on chairs you've cut out and cut up and rearranged if you want to. Remember to look at Picasso's work. Part of each face is facing you and part of each face can be facing the side. One blue eye or one brown eye......you get to decide. It certainly looks silly doesn't it! When you are finished cutting your pieces out and have decided where you want them all start using your glue to hold them in place. When your all finished gluing your project don't forget to sign your work. Picasso did!
New 8-14-98! Optional Group Project: I have a group of approximately 70 kids between the ages of 5 and 12 working on a group project this week. Here are my plans that you can try if you teach any size group. Let me know how it turns out for you!
First, I am placing a roll of paper along the outside brick wall of our local rec center. Supplies on hand will be crayons, odds & ends of collage pieces, construction paper, sissors, stacky glue and glue sticks.
5 & 6 year olds will trace each other on the paper from the pose of their choice. Remember they will be standing against the wall so put your paper low/high enough. They will then be allowed to start coloring in the clothing. They will have 20 minutes to work as we will have spent the first 20 minutes talking about Picasso and reviewing his work.
Next 7 & 8 year olds will continue to trace each other like the first group and coloring in.
Next 9 & 10 year olds will start adding the collage pieces. For example I have made up envelopes like this: *bandaids for the child w/boo-boo's *empty snack bags and soup label for the hungry kids on the paper *old music sheets for the singers in the group *old paint brush for the painter on the paper *kleenex & empty cough drop box for the child w/the cold on the paper......you get the idea! This group personalizes the mural.
Next the 11 & 12 year olds will draw musical instruments or furnishings and cut them into long strips to put on the mural to look puzzle-like to show Picasso's geometric shapes. They will also take diamond shapes of construction paper and fill in some shirts. Cut out hands and legs and paste over the crayoned ones!
This should be lots of fun! I'll put a picture linked here when it's finished!
Optional Art Project:
Optional Writing Projects:
Kindergartner thru 2nd grade: write down all the words you can think of that begin with the letter "p" for Picasso. It's ok to have mom and dad help you spell or use a dictionary. You need to do the writing on your own though!
Third thru 6th grade:Now that you have finished reading about Picasso you can write a "thank you note or friendly letter" to put in your notebook. Write the letter as if you were writing to Picasso himself. Tell him what you like about his work or ask him about his children. Did you find their names when reading about him? Did you see the picture he painted using his son as the subject? Remember a letter must have the following ingredients: heading, greeting, body & closing signature. You can check out the following site for more information on letter writing: Writing Every Day
Here is a terrific art and writing project I found on the web: Personality Collage
"TWO" Optional Science experiments:
1. SLUG FUN! (sent in by Jenny our home school science teacher, Thanks Jenny!) With this project you can demonstrate how a Slug "sees." A slug has 2 sets of tentacles protruding from its head. The upper pair distinguishes between light and dark, while the lower pair help the slug find food by feeling its way through the world.
Cut out a rectangle 8 x 4 inches near th top of a large shopping bag. Cover the open space with waxed paper. Cut up small textures of colored paper, burlap, felt and different textures. Have a child place the bag on their head and get down on hands and knees. Scatter Fabric squares on the floor as food for the slug and have the child try to "see" the food to pick it up and "eat" it. The child will have to use his or her hands as feelers to locate the food.
Fun book to read: (although the slug gets eaten in the end : )
"Some Smug Slug" by Pamela Duncan Edwards. Ages 4 - 8
2. Can you make your own paper? Let's try this simple paper making recipe: You will need scrap paper, water, blender, bucket, small frame with mesh screen stapled to it, felt. This can be a very simple process that leads on to new art projects and experiments! Here are the steps: 1. tear your old newspaper, printing paper, other paper up into small strips and place in a bucket of hot water for at least an hour or all night 2. Lift out your presoaked paper and puree it in your blender to reduce it even smaller into what we call pulp. Takes less than a minute in the blender. The less you blend it the more coarse your pulp will be so experiment with different times: 10 seconds, 20 seconds & 30 seconds.3. For each batch of pulp that your are experimenting with fill a plastic bowl half full of tepid water and pour the pulp mixture in from the blender. Stir to spread out the pulp in the water. 4. Prepare a board with newspaper (to absorb excess water), lay felt over the newspaper. After your board is prepared you take your mold and deckle (remember the wood frame with screen...that's your mold and deckle!) and submerge it into your pulp mixture screen side up at a 45 degree angle. 5. After you've gotten an even covering of pulp on the mesh you lift your mold and deckle up and allow excess water to run off. 6. Quickly flip the mold over face down on the felt. Rub the surface of the mesh to flatten your pulp onto the felt. Place another piece of felt on top of your pulp and repeat the process until all your pulp is in sheets drying between the felt. 7.Once dry the paper is peeled from the felt and can be sprayed with starch for sealing.
You know you can experiment and add pieces of nature to your pulp and see what it does to your paper. Try dry grasses, leaves, petals, threads, colored paper, etc. Have Fun!
Here is the story of one class who made paper along with their pictures: An Adventure in Paper Making
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Artist of the Week: Andrew Wyeth This artist from America desired to paint so that you could look at his work and know the land and people. He comes from a family of artists before and after him. He was home schooled as a child because of his health. To read the biography of Andrew Wyeth on the web click here: Andrew Wyeth Biography To know more about this family of painters check out this web site: The Wyeth Center - Rockland, Maine .
Word of the Week: watercolor a pigment or coloring matter that is mixed with water for use as a paint.
Site of the Week:
Art Project: Watercolor book or poster!
You will need: different paper (see project directions), watercolors (The $1.00 set at the local dime store does not work to your best advantage when experimenting. See if you can find one at your local school store (Holcombs), office supply or Sam's Club/Walmart, etc. You can find a little better set for under $5.00.), poster board/glue are optional.
Directions:This week we are going to have fun with watercolors. We will be using them again in future lessons so this week will be our week to experiment. A lot of folks think of watercolors as childs play. A way for children to color on pages with inexpensive paints that will wash out of clothes. = ) Well, it's fantastic childs play! It is also a beautiful form of art with a wonderful history. Artists such as Cezanne who painted more than 400 watercolors realized the diversity to approaches with this art form. This week you will need to find various paper for your project. Try using any of the following or whatever you come up with: typing paper, rice paper, construction paper, newspaper, homemade paper, etc. We found that a local print shop would give us leftovers to use at our co-op for free! This let us experiment with smooth surfaces, medium surfaces, rough surfaces, shiny and dull surfaces. I guess you can tell by now we are going to see what happens when we paint on different paint surfaces!! Do your paints loose their color? Do they run on the paper because it absorbs to easily? What happens if you accidentally paint on top of another color that's still wet? What happens if you accidentally paint over a color that is dry? Can you take your blue and make it look lighter and darker in places? We call this shading. I want you to take a sponge and sponge over your wet surface with paint lightly. If you use blue paint on a white surface or white paint on a blue surface can you make clouds? If you rake a comb with it's teeth side down against your wet green paint on the page does it look like grass stems? Experiment and see what happens when you wet your paper first then paint on it and then paint the same thing on a dry piece of paper. What was the difference? When your paintings dry you can either make a book out of your experiments or cut them into 4 inch squares and paste them to a poster board. Don't forget to title and sign your book or poster!
"TWO" Optional Science projects:
1. Chromatography experiment sent in by Jenny our home school science teacher. "Here is a chromatography experiment we did in our co-op that is lots of fun."
Take a coffee filter or paper towel and using watercolor markers, draw 8 dots in a circle in the middle of the filter/towel. Place the filter on top of an empty coffee can to catch any drops. Using an eye dropper or something similar, drop a few drops of water on the center of the filter. Use enough water to moisten the colored dots. Wait several minutes and watch the color dots separate into blues, greens, purples, and browns. Try the experiment with different colors.
Fun book to read: "Color, color, color, color" by Ruth Heller. Ages 4 - 12
2. Can you make your own paint? Try making your own watercolors from the following recipe. Remember to experiment with colors.
You will need: 1 tablespoon white vinegar, 2 tablespoons baking soda, 1 tablespoon cornstarch, 1/4 teaspoon glycerin, food coloring, styrofoam egg carton or ice cube tray. How to make it: Mix your first two ingredients: the vinegar and baking soda in a bowl. When your mixture stops bubbling add your next two ingredients: the cornstarch and glycerin. Stir it up good! Poor mixture into egg carton or ice cube tray. Add several drops of food coloring to each section of tray and stir well. Start out with red, yellow and blue food coloring. After you have your first three sections colored you can use your remaining sections to mix colors(use equal parts) and make green (yellow/blue), purple (blue/red), orange (red/yellow). Paints will be in liquid form until they harden overnight before using.
Optional writing project: Since our artist this month loved to paint the American land and it's people this week you can make up a "travel brochure."Fold your paper into three sections or just make one page. Put a small picture of a ranch that you've cut out or drawn at the top of the page On the page below your picture write about your fictional ranch. Tell people why they should come to visit. Do you know what a descriptive word is? It is a word also known as an "adjective." It tells someone about a "noun" which is what your fictional ranch is. An adjective describes the noun! Example: big, beautiful , scary and furry can describe a bear. Using adjectives write out your travel brochure for your folder. Younger children can just write the descriptive words around their picture. Older children should use complete sentences.
Parents may want to check out the following site and incorporate elements of it into this weeks writing: U.S. Travel - An Internet-Enhanced Unit for...
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This page was last updated April 9,2000.
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