Sam's Art Unit

Usually between Christmas and New Years, when Sam is mostly home from work, he teaches a unit to the kids on something he's interested in. This year he taught a general Art Unit. I didn't get many pictures, and I don't have his lesson plan, but he talked about a bunch of design principles and Gestalt theory and how these principles contribute to a pleasing work of art. These are just some pictures of the notes the kids took and some drawings they did, to remind us that we did this unit at all!

The kids love learning from Sam and several of them want to be artists, so this was a really fun unit for them!

Gorilla Art Projects

A couple simple art activities we did:

The children painted their hands white (they loved that) and compared their handprint to a gorilla's handprint. I had this book (Actual Size by Steve Jenkins—great book) from the library and I just made a copy of the gorilla-hand page for each child.

We also had fun with this step-by-step method of How to Draw a Gorilla. I don't think Sam is crazy about this kind of drawing lesson (he prefers teaching principles and foundational skills and so forth), but he wasn't here so it was the best I could do! :)

Bonsai Art

Sam teaches an Art Lesson to the children (and me) when he can on Fridays, so during this unit he taught a class using Bonsai as a vehicle for some fundamental art principles. He showed this video on fractals and then discussed areas of rest and areas of detail, line flow within a composition, etc. He had us draw bonsai using big shapes and try to make them interesting and dynamic with the shapes they chose. After they had their shapes drawn, he had them fill in the shapes using ink and paintbrushes. It was quite fun to do, because the ink was so satisfyingly wet and bold and black! :)

Our bonsai pictures.

For awesome pictures of bonsai (and instructions on how to grow and cultivate them, but that is way too big of a project for us right now!), we recommend this DK Publishing book: Bonsai. We loved looking through it. We just love bonsai in general! 

We liked this video about bonsai, and especially the teeny tiny MINI bonsai they show, no bigger than your thumb. The cutest! Daisy almost died of happiness.

We went to a store that sells bonsai (Cactus and Tropicals) so we could see some in person. We like them so much. If they didn't seem like so much work to keep alive and beautiful, I would definitely want some in our house!

Proportion Drawings

I asked Sam to give us a lesson on proportion, and how artists' understanding of it changed during the Renaissance. As usual, he gave an awesome lesson. One really interesting thing he showed us was this video comparing different styles of female figures in Western Art over 500 years. Fascinating to see how proportions and styles change over time!

Then Sam had the children draw, using our little bendy guy from IKEA. It was cool to see how much better their drawings got as they worked on using relationships (forearm:upper arm, torso:leg, etc.) to draw the figure.

The children also, for some reason, really really liked the part of the lesson where we had people stand up on the table and then measured to see how many "heads" tall they were. They wanted to do it again and again.

Daisy's drawing

Abe's drawing

I really like how Junie's drawing turned out. She worked really hard on it.

Ky's drawing

Seb's drawing (he added in shading as well). He spent a ton of time asking Sam, and erasing, and trying again, to get this right. The angle of the arms as they faced away from him was really tricky to draw, but I think he did a great job with it.

More train drawings and paper models

Here is an update on this post about model paper trains. Seb is still loving to make them, and has done the paper models so many times, he can now make up his own. Above is the train he made for Malachi, with the very exotic and French-sounding name of "Lu Pinkx." :)

A model made with mostly glue instead of tape (it takes longer and is fussier to make, but it looks nicer)

I also really like these ink drawings Sebastian did of various types of trains. He got some greyscale markers for Christmas, and Sam showed him how to use them for shading. I love seeing what Seb draws with them!

And here's my favorite thing of all---this Bunny Train which Sebby made me for Mother's Day. I love it!!

Motor and Sensory Neurons Body Tracing; Reflexes

I remember my brother Philip doing "body tracing" art in 5th grade---they just drew pictures of themselves wearing the clothes they were wearing, life-size. I thought it was SO cool. So, we decided to do the same here, but draw the internal view instead. :) We added two colors of yarn, one to represent the sensory nerve pathways going up toward the brain, and one to represent the motor nerve pathways coming back from the brain and spinal cord to direct muscle movement. We talked about interneurons and autonomic nerves too, but not everyone included those on his or her picture.

These pictures all turned out taller-than-life. Probably because the tracing was very, very difficult with such TICKLISH children. They couldn't hold still while being traced around (very gently, I might add!) to save their lives!

We also did some reaction time and reflex tests, as outlined in this video and this site, and of course we hit our knees with my drumsticks a lot, to test our reflexes. We love doing that.

Seb got really complicated with his. As you can see, his finger has just touched a candle flame, so he's got some reflex action going on as well.

Daisy was just happy to be included (I love how she drew her eyes and mouth on top of her brain)

Junie just got a picture, no nerve pathways. My goodness that drawing is alarming! Sam said it was because she colored her eyes yellow, but I think it has more to do with how I drew her face. *shudder*

Malachi "really just LOVES the digestive system" (his words) (??) and so wanted to include the autonomic nerves and some internal organs.

Seb + Seb

Architects and One-Point Perspective Drawings

We learned about some of the things architects do, and talked about famous architects. We watched an artsy and beautifully-filmed documentary on Norman Foster (fascinating), and we watched the Ken Burns documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright. He had kind of a sad, but very interesting, life. It sparked some serious discussions with the older boys, and both movies, with their retrospective nature, made me do a lot of thinking about what patterns can be seen in my own life, and what they mean.

We talked about the difference between elevations, floor plans, and renderings, and then I asked Sam if he would teach a class on perspective drawing. (We drew floor plans on another day.) He showed us how to do one-point perspective. The boys got the idea pretty well, though getting all the lines right (even with a ruler) can be hard---especially when you're trying to do circles, etc.! Still, it was a useful art lesson and a good introduction to drafting and rendering.

I liked how Seb's looked with the added color. I love the leafy, Art-Nouveau-style stained-glass window by the door on that far wall!

Miscellaneous rock stuff

This is "the NCC," as Sebby fondly referred to it. That stands for "Natural Crystal Cave." He worked on this cave for days, and then led tours of it in the dark with a flashlight.

Sam taught a class on how to draw rocks. He talked about cross-hatching and shadows. Seb drew a rock covered with crystals.

Everybody made rock collections for this unit. We keep them in these big egg cartons. The egg cartons work nicely because you can stack them two or three high if you have lots of rocks (and if you eat lots of eggs, which we do).

I got these posters here and we LOVE them. They are on the bulletin board right by our kitchen table, and I don't think a meal has gone by in the past two months where someone hasn't referred to them in some way. The boys all memorized the Mohs Scale without even trying to.