Art Class And The S Word

Every other Tuesday, Thing 4 heads to the big city for art class. She loves art class, just like she loves piano lessons and dance class. And she's very much looking forward to starting her acting classes. I'm beginning to see a pattern here. Math? Not so much. Anything related to the arts? Definitely.

Recently the S word has come up again. You know..."Don't you worry about socialization?" I don't even like the term socialization. It sounds so forced...like something we do to make people fit in. I find it negative and, frankly, kind of creepy. I suspect that what people really mean is, "Don't you worry that your children will never learn to interact with other children if you keep them locked in your house all day and they never see anyone but you and the UPS man when he makes the almost daily delivery of Amazon packages?" (I'm expecting to hear from the My Strange Addiction people any time now.)

But back to art class. When I walked in yesterday to pick up Thing 4 and her friend, it struck me that this is the way I want my children interacting with other children. On this day, my daughter was sitting in a class of 17 children of many different ages. A couple were close to her age, and most were at least 3-4 years older. It was such a diverse group of kids. I appreciate that she has kids in her class who have been at this art thing longer...kids she can look up to. I appreciate that she has the opportunity to interact with children (and adults) of many ages. The "real world" is made up of many different kinds of people of all ages from many different backgrounds. What better way to learn to relate to people in the real world than to live in the real world every day?

I stood for a bit and listened to the casual conversations going on in the room. The kids were complimenting each other's work, asking "What shade of green do you think would look good here?", talking about past paintings they had done. The teacher was easily facilitating the work going on in the room and it was obvious that the kids respected her and she them. Several of the children (who I didn't know) came up to show me their paintings and asked what I thought about their work. They were very comfortable conversing with me and seemed so mature and, dare I say, normal.

What more could I want for my daughter? Socialization? Not so much. The ability to develop real and valuable interpersonal skills and maybe a true friendship or two? Definitely.

Marbling Paper

This week, OM 3 had us marbling paper. This is quite possibly the coolest art project we've done since we began this crazy OE experiment a year and a half ago.

We started with the marbling set that came in our OM 3 craft kit. (Buying that kit was one of the best decisions I've ever made. When it's time to do a project, I have everything right there...no running to Hobby Lobby to piece together our materials.)


We filled a pan with 2-3" of water and placed the float paper.



Then, we added color, one drop at a time to the float paper.



The kids loved watching the color shoot out from the paper and move through the water. They were amazed that the color stayed on the surface.


Next, the kids blew on the water, causing the colors to move around (but not blend), which created cool designs. This can also be accomplished by dragging the colors around with paint brushes.


We carefully laid heavy weight paper on top of the water. (Our first attempt was with lighter weight sketching paper, but it rolled when it got wet.) Card stock would work well.



And when we lifted it up...Voila!


Marbled Paper!

When Thing 4 saw the result, she literally gasped and said, "Please don't ever put me back in school." (She really likes art.)

This project was so much fun that the kiddos showed Thing 2 and the OE Dad when they got home tonight. They both made some, too.


And I loved it so much that I marbled all the trash that I found on my kitchen counter.


Now we have to figure out how to make something gifty with this paper.

Today in Oak Meadow Science

This week in third grade, we are studying plants and our relationship with them. We learned about the plant oxygen and food cycles yesterday, and today we learned that in addition to food and clean air, plants provide us with beauty. The assignment for today was to find ten flowers/plants in our immediate environment and draw them in the Main Lesson Book.



In fifth grade, we are studying the envrironment and our ecosystem. We talked about living and non-living things in our environment. Here, Thing 3 is making a mural of a forest scene and including both living and non-living things in his drawing.


When we have a busy day (like we have today), it's tempting to skip the more artsy aspects of our lessons and get on with Math, Latin and more "school-y" things. I'm trying to resist that temptation and remember that taking time to observe and draw a flower is important, too.

Watercolor Painting a la Oak Meadow

I'm learning that Oak Meadow is not a curriculum to be rushed. Everything we do in OM is very "intentional" with a real and well-thought out purpose. In addition, everything is a process. In fact, for Third Grade, I have a Home Teacher's Process Manual that covers everything from Guidelines for Recorder Playing to Crayon Drawing.

Today we worked on Watercolor Painting. There are four pages in the Teacher Process Manual devoted to teaching Watercolor Painting. Who knew painting with watercolors was so complex?

With Oak Meadow, there is no using those nasty watercolors that come in the plastic box...the ones that all turn black after a couple of uses because all the colors get mixed up, but then it doesn't matter anyway because they crack when they dry out and you have to buy new ones. No, we used high quality paints and a good paint brush.

We used just the three primary colors. Sometimes less is more. At first, Thing 4 balked at the lack of choice, but she quickly figured out that mixing colors to create other colors is fun! With this technique, you mix the colors on the paper as you paint, not in a dish.

Oak Meadow encourages a "wet paper" method of watercolor painting. When the paper is wet, the colors blend more easily, and it allows more movement of the paint lines. I thought it was a strange concept until we tried it. If you're going to use the wet paper method, it's important to use high quality watercolor paper. All of my high quality supplies came in the art kit I ordered from OM, but you could find them at a craft store.

Today she really enjoyed just experimenting with the colors and seeing them blend.

It's not exactly a Monet, but she had fun! There's no going back to those nasty watercolors in the plastic box.

Handmade Christmas Gifts

For art last week, we made coasters to give as Christmas gifts. (Isn't it funny how I say "For art last week", as though we do art every week?)

At Hobby Lobby, I purchased some coaster molds, stepping stone cement and mosaic glass.

We put a thin layer of Vaseline on the inside of each mold, then put cement to the top edge of the mold. We let the cement sit for five minutes before placing the glass pieces.

The coasters dried in the molds for 24 hours before we removed them. After removing, I placed them on a cookie cooling rack to let the underside cure for several hours. Then, I put some felt on the bottoms.

Voila! Coasters!