Preschool Art Lessons Part 2: Bruegel and Cool/Warm Colors

(This is an ongoing series of casual art exploration I am going through with a few preschoolers. 

You can see my first post here.)

This week we continued to use the Usborne Children's Book of Art and do a little learning about Bruegel.

Because, understandably, as soon as they arrive, my little students want to begin getting messy, I reserve some of our "history" until later in the lesson. We started out by watching this little video about warm and cool colors (which they giggled about!).

I pulled out the liquid watercolors and we began painting our color wheel. I used some printables from  an art lesson on "Hot Dogs and Cool Cats" from TPT that you can find here.

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After mixing our paints and enjoying the process of seeing new colors come alive, we talked about how cool it is that you can divide the color wheel in half and have one side with WARM colors and the other side with COOL colors. We also talked about what colors make us feel certain things.

Then we colored our dogs with whatever choice of warm color they wanted, and our cats with whatever cool color they chose. The lesson has some other activities that could extend this activity, but today we just kept it to these. We may re-visit some of them other activities later. 

We began working on this project from Deep Space Sparkle, using warm and cool colors. The girls all colored/painted two sheets of paper: one with nothing but warm colors, the other with nothing but cool colors. 

While they were drying, we watched a little video about Bruegel and I encouraged the girls to shout out when they noticed warm colors or cool colors in his work. 

Next week, we'll finish up their warm & cool piece and begin on our next topic (Rembrandt, Veneer, and Everyday Scenes)! 

I really liked this power point and simple instructions on atmospheric perspective with Bruegel, and I had planned on us doing it too, but we just ran out of time. We will probably use it when we study Caspar Friedrich and oceans/mountains. 

This post had lots of links and good info on Pieter Bruegel, too. 

Preschool Art Lessons

In the fall, a homeschooling friend of mine began talking about doing a mini-art lesson each week with her 4 year old daughter, so we began doing just a little crafty/art time together with Ariana. 

It's evolved a little this semester, and we added another little student. I love helping little ones begin learning about simple art basics, and I thought I'd share my plans here for anyone else who'd like to play along at home! 

Last semester, we experimented a lot with color theory and mediums. We also did a lot of seasonal play! 

I got this book before Christmas and decided that during the spring semester, I would loosely follow it and we would do some veryyyyyy simple studies of the Masters. 

Last week (our first week), we talked about the colors in the rainbow and experimented with the different ways different media looks: watercolor, different tipped markers, liquid water color, acrylic paint, neocolors, and oil pastels. 

The girls made a banner that they took home, a different color & medium represented on each piece of the banner. It was cute! 

This week, we talked about the Renaissance and specifically, Leonardo Da Vinci! Before we got into all of that, though, we looked in the mirror and tried to draw our different expressions (especially paying attention to how our eyes, eyebrows, and mouth looked during each one). 

Then we watched this little video about Leonardo Da Vinci. 

After hearing about the Mona Lisa, we had to try our hands at adding hair and clothing! (This activity would be really fun to see how they did at different ages.) 

(Find this printable here)

Then we worked on self portraits, using this printable. 

Because little ones often tend to rush through an activity like this, I had them only do what I instructed them for each step instead of just free styling it. They first had to go look in the mirror and I prompted them with questions like "What shape are your eyes? Are they football shaped or circles? What color are they?" and then they would come back and just draw their eyes... and so on and so forth, so that they really took the time to look at their faces and try to draw details. I loved their results! 

 I'll continue to share our journey each week! 

Beginning again.

It's been nearly a whole year since I wrote in my blog, and I'd nearly given it up for a goner. Instagram and facebook has taken it's place, and since I mostly use this place to share my creative endeavors, I have resorted to using those more photo oriented sharing places.

However, as time has gone on, I realized there were things about this little space I'd carved out that I missed: a place where I could write about being a mother, share ideas on ways we'd found worked in our marriage, tell everyone about an awesome new book or recipe I'd discovered, and record truths I wanted to be able to go back and remind myself of.

So... I'm back. I'm not sure how frequently I will post, but I will. It's time. And I'm ready.


XOXO,
V

Thankful Buckets

A friend of mine inspired me the other day with some little goodies she'd left on her bed for her kiddos to surprise them when they got home from school. Most days, I get home at the same time as my kids, so I don't get to do little surprises like that... but this week, I am off for Thanksgiving and was excited to make these little "thankful" prizes for my kids. 

They are very simple, really... just some little strawberry baskets I purchased on etsy filled with baggies of our favorite chocolate drizzled popcorn for an afternoon snack. I added tags made with the NoelMignon Gather Together and Union Square kits. 

Just like any other mom, I find myself getting into a rut with fussing and reminding and nagging and everything else with my kids... and I want to be more mindful of telling them of the good they are bringing to our home. That is the point of these little tags... so that they know, regardless of them leaving their shoes and backpacks on the middle of the dining room floor for the bazillionth time, that I am THANKFUL they are in our family... thankful that they are ours. 

I hope they love them... and that they feel that they are loved! 

End of the year

Today marks the end of my kids' first and second grade years. All of a sudden I feel like they are growing up too fast. If I could freeze time, in some ways I think I'd do it right now. They are all in such good stages.

(Sabby registered for Kindergarten)

(Em's first Girl Scout camporee)

(Atticus' awards day)

(Ariana's end of year craft- oh my heart!) 

I can't freeze time, but I can scrapbook. My creativity time has taken an all time slow down lately, due to my family time taking a major increase. Not a bad reason- I just need to figure out how to balance in a little "me" time. It's harder and harder to find these days. I feel more of a sense of urgency to record all these sweet moments, though. I realized the other day that some of my feelings of routine and being stuck in a rut had to do with the loss of sitting down at night and doing some artful recording of our days. It helped my perspective of life a lot. And I miss it.

Tomorrow marks the last day of my MDO teaching year as well. Goodness me, my class this year has been incredibly precious. I honestly couldn't have asked for a better group of kiddos! They all started out as little two year olds and have grown into funny, independent, kind three year olds. I went to college to get my Elementary Education degree but never wanted to really teach in a "big school" because the whole school politics thing bogs me down tremendously... but teaching preschoolers is so up my alley. I feel like I'm really in the place I'm supposed to be. And on that note, I'm planning on sharing more of our weekly activities and crafts on here through the year. I've struggled the last few months on what to share on here, what to write about... and it is a big part of my life that I think should be added here. :)

Thoughts on Room Sharing with Three Sisters

I've mentioned our home here a time or two ;) - we live in an old Southern house, built in 1924. I love its screened in front porch, the tongue-in-groove walls, the big old wooden doors. It's got an interesting layout... but what I don't particular love is the way the rooms are portioned off. I am grateful for our home. And I believe that small homes create close families. 

Right?

Sometimes teaching that philosophy doesn't go over so well with  my kiddos. Especially my three girlies who share a room. As we discover in the world pretty quickly, not everyone is like us! My three girls are no exception. I have a super tidy, neat, minimalist daughter, who likes a place for everything and everything in its place. I have a magpie daughter, who gathers up tiny bits of paper and everything is sentimental to her. And I have a silly three year old, whose personality lends itself to chattering into the night and snuggling up close to whoever is her favorite at the moment. 

Providing space for all of them to flourish and for them to learn to get along and respect each other is challenging, to say the least. I'm a "researcher" by nature (I get it from my sweet Grams)- I like to look up how other people have done things, read about different strategies, and learn from others' trials and errors. I have discovered that in looking up info on the WWW about siblings sharing rooms, most of what I can find is either super functional or super extravagant. There's not much middle man out there.

So this post is for you, whoever you might be, looking for cute but affordable rooms for little girls that are sharing the space. :) You're not alone! 

This is the girls' closet. It's the one room in the house with a big closet. The right side of it has a closet bar hanging from the other bar, so we have two rows of clothes: one for my big girl and one for the two little girls. We also have hanging shoe storage on that side. The left side has a three drawer plastic cart with pjs in it, and a basket of socks on the top. Storage for sleeping bags, swim stuff, and other odds and ends is on the left. On the top shelf, I have a rubbermaid bin for each girl with clothes for the next season in it. 

The shelves are backed with wrapping paper. Each girl has her own shelf, and the two big girls also have a bin on the very bottom. Ariana (the littlest) doesn't really care so much about that yet, so all of her stuff is consolidated to one shelf. 

This is our real life, not magazine-worthy sleep situation at the moment. I can't tell you how many times the girls have traded spots, so who knows how long this current arrangement will last! The top bunk is Emerson's (my oldest). She gets really frustrated when her bed gets messy, so I suggested she move up top so no one would mess with her bed. It's working for now! The butterflies were cut with my Silhouette machine. 

The bottom bunk is currently being shared (SHARED!!) by the two little girls. If you'll notice, there's actually a trundle bed below, which is technically Ariana's bed. But at the moment, they wanted to share a bunk and since they are so little, it's fine by me. Sabby is my "magpie" and likes to collect things, so her bed is always full of stuffed animals and notebooks and hidden snacks (that I have to confiscate). We have white twinkle lights woven through the slats above the bed and it makes story time at night quite dreamy. We added some glow in the dark stars this weekend as well which the girlies love when the lights go out. 

The girls share this dresser (that is in desperate need for paint and a knob upgrade... when I have some "spare" time- haha!). The bottom drawer is Sabby's, the middle is Ariana's, and Emerson opted for the baskets and mini suitcase for hers. 

It works for us right now. We keep toys in the playroom and the girls feel a sense of ownership of their room without being overwhelmed. 

And I hope that it will help draw them closer. My prayer is that my girls love each other for their differences, and that I can help their bonds grow strong. 

Golden Hour.

Last week, we had a talent show at church and Emerson wanted to perform. 

She's been wanting to for at least 2 years. 

I'm not the kind of mama that really knows how to sing and dance or is inclined to perform on stage. I've been in plenty of goofy things, but that's as far as it really goes for me. 

Graciously, one of the joys of community is that I have those that are my sisters in Christ that can help fill in the gaps where I am not able. One of my friends is quite the opposite of me, and she joyfully helped Emerson fulfill this dream. 

This girl reminds me about bravery. And dreams. And the simplicity of being a little girl. 

Before the "big show," we had a little bit of time to kill so I took the opportunity to take some pics of the kiddos in the Golden Hour of light. I wanted to capture them. In the moment. 

I also wanted to distract her (and myself) from getting too nervous. I'm pretty sure I may have been the only nervous one. 

(I asked her if she could do a couple of "serious faces." HAHA!)

And I love that she couldn't hold it together. 

Here's her performance from that night. She's not going to be on American Idol any time soon (thank goodness!) but she is a star in our eyes. I'm so proud of her for getting up there and doing it! 

The boy.

The same day I got those shots of Sabby, I tried to snap a few of Atticus. He doesn't like his picture taken (a trait he inherited from his daddy that I'm trying to change a wee bit), but it was The Golden Hour and we had a few minutes to waste.

And so this all happens.

And then he had to laugh at his own hilarity. (A trait he inherited from me.)

I did get these two sweet pictures that gives me a little glimpse into the man he will become. And it makes my heart happy. Nearly as much as those silly ones above.