Teaching Kids about Art

Although my husband is not particularly artistic, he loves art. It wasn't a love that he grew up with but one that he cultivated in his ten years as a teacher. During his 10-year career in education, he incorporated art history into his social studies courses and visited famous art museums around the world with his students. Now that he is out of the classroom, a love of art and its history is something that he is trying to instill in our kids. While I'm not nearly as knowledgeable about art as my husband is, I want my children to have an appreciation for art as well.

As I plan activities for our summer, art will definitely figure into our days. While Brett experiences the business side of the art world as a legal intern for a museum, I'll be looking for ways to incorporate art into my time at home with the girls. To get us started, I picked up a copy of this book for L and E:

13 Artists Children Should Know by Angela Wenzel

This beautiful hardback book highlights the following 13 artists:

• Leonardo da Vinci
• Jan Vermeer
• Claude Monet
• Henri Rousseau
• Mary Cassatt
• Vincent van Gogh
• Henri Matisse
• Paul Klee
• Franz Marc
• Pablo Picasso
• Marc Chagall
• Frida Kahlo
• Andy Warhol

Each chapter is 2-4 pages long and talks about the artist, the time period in which he/she lived and what the artist tried to communicate through art. Several examples of each artist's work are included. However, I will note that some of the artwork does depict nudity - namely Vitruvian Man by daVinci, The Dream by Rousseau, The Dance by Matisse, Guernica by Picasso, and My Grandparents, My Parents, and I by Kahlo. Personally, this doesn't bother our family, but I know that others might feel differently.

Honestly, I'm getting excited about studying art with L and E this summer. I think we'll use this book as a jumping off point. Naturally, we'll include field trips to some art museums (Daddy's work of course!) and some at-home art projects. I'm also seriously considering purchasing some curriculum from Meet The Masters, a system for teaching art that includes multi-media slide presentations, technique packets and art projects. They offer several different tracks that cover 5 artists each, and each track is available in different age levels. You can see how Meet the Masters works here. Track A includes lessons on Van Gogh, Cassatt, Mondrian,  Picasso and Monet. Wouldn't that be a great way to follow up our study of the book?! I'm happy to see that they offer the program to homeschools and small groups in addition to public schools so that everyone can have access to this great resource.

Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links. 

Make It Monday: How to Make A Dry Erase Board

For several months after we moved into this house, we had a huge empty wall in our dining room. We are a family who loves to learn, so I knew early on that I wanted to turn it into a "learning wall" by hanging some writing boards there. The storebought solution would be to buy dry erase boards. But, they aren't exactly cheap. Ones on the cheaper end still go for about $15 or so and I wanted a collection of them on my wall. With our law student budget, I really couldn't justify spending $60 or more just on boards for our wall. Plus, storebought boards don't really have a whole lot of personality. I wanted some COLOR to liven up the wall. So, I decided to make my own.

The dry erase boards weren't really that difficult or expensive to make. I just took some old frames, cleaned them up, gave them a fresh coat of paint, and added some plain white posterboard under the glass. We just use plain ol' dry erase makers on the glass. I even found some colored washable ones that the girls can use without me worrying about them ruining their clothes.

Here's a general overview of how I did it:

I found these little beauties at the local thrift store. Obviously, I didn't care about the art inside the frames -- I just wanted a wood frame that could hold some paint. These cost between $4-6 each.

After cleaning them up a little bit, I painted them with some inexpensive craft paint that I picked up for $1/bottle at Walmart. One bottle per frame is more than enough. I had trouble finding the right shades so I ended up mixing colors to come up with what I wanted.

For the background, I kept it simple and used white posterboard cut to fit. Target had the cheapest white posterboard -- I think it was about $0.40 per sheet. However, if you wanted additional texture, you could try some lightly colored artist paper.

Since we plan on everyone in the family using these boards, I had Brett attach them to the wall with some brackets. We really don't want glass frames falling off of the walls and onto the kiddies!

When all was said and done, I spent about $25 for the entire wall.

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For other money saving ideas, be sure to stop by LifeasMOM on Fridays for Frugal Friday.

A French Lesson

Being a former French major and travel-lover, it has always been a goal of mine to give my kids exposure to other languages at a young age. However, since I didn't grow up bilingual, it doesn't come naturally to me to teach them two languages simultaneously. Although my girls have both spent hours listening to a music and rhymes CD Baby's First Words in French as well as watching the Brainy Baby French DVD, they haven't picked up too much French - just a few words here and there. So, I realize that it will take much more effort on my part if I actually want them to learn French before high school.

About a year ago, I stumbled upon the Learn French Together system from Random House's Living Lanugage (they also offer the system in Spanish and Italian). The system includes three workbooks complete with lesson plans, three CD's, stickers and crayons. After I purchased the set, Ella was just interested in the stickers and crayons. Yesterday, I decided to try working on it with her again -- and Lucie even sat in on the lesson. We worked on basics like Hello, My name is..., I live in..., Goodbye and Please. Overall, I would say that it was a success! Since Tuesday is our least-scheduled day of the week, I hope to continue working on a new lesson each week. I think that it will be fun for all of us!