Home Art Studio

I have a super exciting review for you today!

Over Christmas Break, a great big box of materials showed up on our doorstep from Home Art Studio!

We received their Second Grade DVD, and all the supplies to go with it.  Don't be fooled by the level!  My reviewers range from 4 to 13, and the projects were challenging enough to keep my 5th and 8th graders on their toes!

As soon as Christmas break was over, we popped the DVD into the computer to watch the first of 17 lessons.

The theme for this disk is Fairy Tales.

Our first lesson was to create a color wheel, to refer back to in future lessons.

Instead of drawing our own circles, I did a search for a "printable color wheel" and found a site with several varieties.  I chose the basic 6-colors for Hannah and Katie to use.

Eli and Jack have been exposed to the color wheel already, so I printed them the more advanced 12-color wheel.

They did great, blending their own "in between" shades.

When Katie did hers, I left Hannah's completed wheel in front of her as an example, and put a dot of the correct color in each section to guide her.  This was her first time painting, and she did well.

The next lesson was based on the Vietnamese tale, The Watermelon King.  This was our first experience working with watercolors in a tube!  I loved the chance to play with a new medium.  We obviously need to work on consistency of shade, which will come with practice.

You'll notice Eli's watermelon is seedless.  In the video, I noticed that the marker the instructor was using "bled" when she painted over it.  I didn't care for that effect, so I decided I would add my seeds after my painting was dry.  Eli decided he liked his without seeds altogether.  Fortunately, the ink for Jack's seeds did not run.

Our next lesson found us drawing and then painting Blue Dogs.  Katie (who is 4) couldn't keep up/process the instructions, but Hannah, who IS a second grader did just fine.

Inspired by George Rodrigue, we created our own Blue Dogs through guided drawings and then paint.  We took things a step further by looking him up online and seeing a variety of his Blue Dog paintings.

I had Hannah and Jack go back over their paintings with Sharpie to give them more definition through outline once they were fully dried.

Eli chose not to paint his, but used colored pencils, instead.  You get a lot more of the details of the drawing in this view.

There are 7 DVDs available, from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade, plus an extra disk of Holiday Arts and Crafts.  Each one costs $29.99.  There are also some free lessons you can check out online.  You can gather the materials needed to complete the lessons on your own, or you can order them through a convenient link on the Home Art Studio website.

Although my boys are older than Second Grade, I have noticed that younger art programs work much better for them than older ones.  I could easily see us doing the next disc in this series when we have completed this one.  We are loving this program, and I look forward to sharing more projects from this disc in our weekly homeschool posts.

You can connect with Home Art Studio on Facebook and Pinterest.

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Our Week

This week went by quickly!  We're seeing signs of SPRING here already.  The trees are budding and blooming, daffodils are popping up.  Such a mild winter!  It's warm enough to skip the fleece jacket when I do afternoon school pickup.  Looking forward to good park weather!  

In history, we've made it through the Barbarians, Charlemagne, the Celts, Saint Patrick, and Vikings.

Miss Hannah is still working her way through the Art Projects book.

In Home Art Studio, we did 2 projects this week!

The first one was based on Humpty Dumpty, and involved masking tape and bristol board.

And SALT!  Salted watercolor produces neat effects.

I just love all the vibrant color in this project.

The tape peeled up easily after the paint was dry, and we were left with works like these:

See how neat the texture is with the salt?

I have to say, I'm really enjoying how easy Home Art Studio makes it for us to do art each week.  Watch the DVD, do the project.

Katie Bug was playing with the pouch lids and wanted me to get a picture of this.

In addition to colors, and matching, we're working on patterns and counting and copying.

I thought Luke might be interested in the bright colors, but he just rubbed the carpet and never actually touched the pouch lids.

Eli has been building with K'nex the last several days.  I really like the turtle!

I like that he'll build something according to the directions... and then modify it to make it more his own.  He's made several improvements to most of his vehicles.

Our second project with Home Art Studio was inspired by The Princess and the Pea.

It was a resist project.  The kids drew beds, then traced over them with glue.  (Eli chose green glue from our window clings a while back.)

The next day, after the glue was dry, they painted their projects.

I like that even though they're all doing the same project, each piece turns out so differently.

This week, we learn about castles and knights and the medieval church and the pope.  Should be fascinating!

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Arts and Crafts in Our Homeschool

I have a confession.  I wasn't very good about art when my big kids were little.  Not "I wasn't good at art."  I wasn't good about letting them do art.  I'm still not good at art, but I'm a lot better about doing it than I used to be.  This week, we're talking about the arts in Virtual Curriculum Fair.

A huge part of that is that I mellowed out as I got older and had more kids.  I used to be so uptight about stains that we rarely even pulled out markers.  Now, Katie regularly leaves bits of cut up paper all over the school room, as she has free access to that dreaded art supply:  scissors.

Another factor in the 1000% increase in our homeschool art is that we changed how we homeschool.  We used to be workbook schoolers, and art was a treat that only happened if all the work was done.  In switching to more flexible (and more interesting) curriculum, art was incorporated.  I was all about checking the boxes, and since art was a box, it got done.  Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with doing art, and began to even add in "unassigned" art projects and crafts.

Our family has been richly blessed with the opportunity to review several art programs, and it has been a great experience for us.  Doing a review forces me to really get into a curriculum, and it has opened up a whole new world for our homeschool, and introduced us to fun new art supplies.

I'd like to share some of our favorite art programs with you.

ARTistic Pursuits Early Elementary book 1 - this is where we discovered the magic of watercolor crayons!
ARTistic Pursuits Early Elementary book 2 - where we worked with gold leaf and spackle.

Drawing Unto Him - a high school drawing program

See The Light Repeated Sweets - DVD lesson
See The Light Tiffany Window - DVD lesson

Home Art Studio - review of Second Grade DVD.  I liked this program well enough to buy 3 more DVDs.  As we come to the end of our current one, I need to decide whether to go forward and buy the 5th grade DVD, or backward and add the first grade DVD to our collection.  The projects appeal to a really wide range of ages, and I think we'd be fine with either.

Art Achieve - online video lessons with a printable "warm up" to help with the drawing
Atelier Homeschool Art/Arts Attack - We got a sample membership from filling out a recent homeschool survey, and we did our first lesson today.  It's another online video lesson style curriculum.

Art In History is another favorite.  AIH ties in nicely with historical studies or literature studies.  Or how about that time we made wooden shields?

Another way to incorporate art is to bring it on field trips.  Nature studies lend themselves to drawing plants, of course, and there's also that time we took our sketchbooks and colored pencils to the zoo.

Art supplies can be inspiring all on their own, without being part of a program, too.  We're big fans of Kwik Stix, and we've had fun trying out paints and more paints, and papers and brushes, too.  Even bottle caps can be the springboard for a fun craft.

We've also taken local art classes, both through the (now defunct) homeschool co op, and from a (formerly) local art teacher.

Finally, blogs and Pinterest can be great sources of inspiration for art projects and crafts.  Our Spring Flowers project was inspired by a "fireworks" art project I saw online.

Not making the time to do art with my older kids is one of my biggest homeschool regrets.  I'm glad I had the chance to make different choices with my younger kids.

Now I invite you to visit my fellow homeschool bloggers who are talking about seeking beauty in their homeschools:

Links will all be live by Monday at 12 noon EST.
Living & Loving Art by Susan @ Homeschooling Hearts & Minds
Putting the Fun in School by Michele @ Family, Faith and Fridays
Art Fun In Our Homeschool by Amanda @Hopkins Homeschool
Fine Arts Is The Fun Part by Laura @ Four Little Penguins
Washing Dust Off Our Souls by Lisa @ Golden Grasses
Bringing Beauty Into Your Homeschool Through Poetry by Dana @ Roscommon Acres
Seeking out the beauty... by Kim @ Good Sweet Love
Joy in Home Education by Sarah @ Delivering Grace
Teaching Drawing (When You Can't Draw) by Lizzy @ Peaches At Home
Homeschool Art for the Artistically Challenged by Brittney @ Mom's Heart
Jesus, Peace, Freedom & Our Homeshool by Meghan W @ Quiet In The Chaos
Fine Arts Options in High School by Christy @ Unexpected Homeschool
Reluctant Artist? What do you do? by Annette @ A Net in Time
Making Fine Arts a Priority by Lisa @ McClanahan 7
Creative Pursuits by Kym @ Homeschool Coffee Break
Arts and Crafts in Our Homeschool by Shecki @ Greatly Blessed
Where Do You Find Beauty? by Lori H @ At Home: where life happens
Looping our Beauty Topics Saved our Homeschool by HillaryM @ Walking Fruitfully

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Our Paint-y Week

Books, books, books.  I'm glad the girls are strong readers interested in many things.  

If you notice the "new" stickers on a couple of these, it's because I requested a few books I saw in Paul's World magazine.  Always looking for things to add to our library list.  And it's fun when the girls tell me little tidbits that they picked up in a book.  "Mom!  Did you know that hummingbirds....?"

I mentioned the color wheel, and got two blank looks, so we went back to the second grade Home Art Studio DVD and did the color wheel segment.  

We reviewed Home Art Studio 5 years ago, and I liked it enough to purchase a couple more of their DVDs.  

Grumman seems to be attracted to wet paint.  

This is the printable Color wheel we used.  The video instructs you how to make your own circle, but this was easier for me.  I printed on cardstock, for durability.  The color mixing didn't go as well as I hoped.  

Miss Katie had a birthday!

She's 10 now!  A little bittersweet for me, my last baby being double digits.  

Katie has been playing Nintendogs lately, so Buddy & Grampagino sent her the Sims Pets game.

In honor of the changing seasons, I fired up Crikey, my Cricut machine, and made a few things.  

I had green glitter vinyl from a St. Patrick's Day shirt I made for Hannah, so I only needed some orange.  

Shirt for Hannah

Shirts for both girls, from the Hello Kitty design I bought to make a mask a while back (I don't think I showed that).  I changed the colors and used more glitter green for these.  

Although, when they were in progress, I decided I like the look of monochrome Hello Kitty, so I'll probably do a project like this at some point.  

Cleo has always been the bigger of the two kittens, so it was no surprise when she hit the 2# milestone needed for surgery first.  I contacted the shelter to get her scheduled for altering.  

We did the next project from the Home Art Studio DVD, watercolor watermelons.  

The girls fashioned rain forest animals (and a tree) from clay, and baked them.

Grumman had to check out the new smell, of course.  

Hannah had a little piece of clay left while we were working on math.  So she made a noose.  Because math.  

Our Eat 2 Explore box for Brazil has 3 recipes.  We tried the moqueca with chicken instead of shrimp.  My family was not impressed, but they're not familiar with coconut milk, so I'm sure that was part of it.  Also, I'm not the greatest cook, so that may have been a contributing factor.  If I were to make it again, I'd cut the chicken and the onions into much smaller pieces and add garlic.  

Action shot of Katie, concentrating on painting the clay animals.  

In flying science, we learned about nests, and had a notebook project to make little flip up descriptions of various kinds of nests.  

These projects are a great way to practice following directions.  

In fact, I'm only showing one completed project because following directions can be a challenge, and gluing the wrong things together and then trying to tear them apart doesn't work out very well.  But we'll keep practicing.  

This is the book from which the clay rainforest animal idea came.  The girls are starting to cringe a little when they see the word "projects" on the cover of a book.  Getting them to use problem solving skills and build independence is something we're working on this year.  

Books, books, books again.  A couple times now, I've gotten a book from the library, only to have Hannah tell me, "We have this book."  Oops.  But I'm glad she's read it, either way.  

After we finish Brazil this week, we head to Norway.  I'm a little disappointed that the reading list for Norway is so short!  In fact, they put several books set in other European countries on the list.  If you know of any good books set in Norway, let me know.  

Miss Cleo is the sweetest.  She was always the first to come running when I opened the door and squeaked, "Hello babies!"  Here, she cuddled up, put her nose on my foot, and went to sleep.  

She was also fond of napping with Bertie.  They most often slept in a heap, but this was too cute not to share.  

It was fun watching them tussle and play and explore together.  Two kittens together are the best!

But all good things must come to an end.  And Miss Cleo went back to the shelter yesterday for surgery today.  

My furry ferocious friend will be at the weekend kitten adoption pop ups soon, and hopefully will find her new family quickly.  

She's a spunky girls with a great purrsonality.  I miss her.  (I missed her even more when Bertie was crying for her last night!)  

The finished rainforest scene.  We used a paper bag from library pickups to make the background trees.  And we added a couple of Animal Toob figures.  

Poor Bertie!  He misses his sissy.  He's gaining well, though, and he'll most likely be leaving us next week.  I'd secretly hoped to keep him, because he's going to be such a beautiful cat when he's bigger, but Grumman is adamantly opposed to the idea.  Oh Grumman.