Expedition Earth: Russia

I have been lax in posting about our Expedition Earth adventures.  We are still trying to study a country a week to go along with the curriculum.  We have missed a week here and there.  I've tried to add a read-aloud story set in the country we are studying.  That hasn't always worked out for each country, but luckily we had a copy of the book Another Celebrated Dancing Bear which is a FIAR book.  We didn't actually read it five days in a row (we don't often fit in reading our FIAR books five days in a row!) and just read it once.  It is a nice story, but not incredibly engaging (in my opinion).  It did introduce some aspects of Russian culture that we later read about in some library books about Russia.  I would love to say we always do a special project to go with each country, but we honestly don't fit projects in that often.  I feel that I'm doing well if the boys complete their passports, color the flag of the country, fill out the info pages for the country, and can find it on the globe and name its capital.  Anything else is icing on the cake.  For Russia, I'd saved an idea in Pinterest that I wanted to use for an art project.  This project can be found on Art Projects for Kids.  I LOVE how our Russian cathedrals turned out.  I enjoyed sitting and doing this project with the boys and am pleased with how much time they each spent on their drawings.  In an effort to make a full disclosure, I will add that I did not think my youngest would actually complete this project as he was having a rough start to the day.........even to the point of going through two pieces of drawing paper and throwing a crayon across the room.  Yeah.  Loads of homeschool fun in THAT moment.  After a brief (ahem) bit of time spent thinking about things on a chair, he came back to the project with a focus and intensity that both surprised and impressed me.  My older son and I were done and had moved on to other things by the time my little guy got going.  He had requested a larger sheet of paper and wanted to look at the photo of St. Basil's cathedral found in a link in the directions at Art Projects for Kids.  He intently studied the photo and tried to include ALL the details in his drawing, even down to the statues in the foreground and the trees surrounding the building.  Wowza!!  You just never know............

Here are our finished drawings.........

First is mine.............so fun to take the time to sit and do this project.  I don't claim to be an artist, but the process was really enjoyable.

Next up, my oldest son's drawing.  I loved how he labeled the different details of his drawing with the name of the crayon color that he used (thus the "macaroni and cheese" steeples).

And here is my youngest son's drawing of St. Basil's.  CLICK HERE to see the photo he used as a reference.  His detail is really quite remarkable.

FIAR: A Pair of Red Clogs

 

We "rowed" the book A Pair of Red Clogs for our third week of homeschool.  We tied this book into our study of Japan in Expedition Earth.   This is a sweet story with great illustrations that all of us enjoyed so much. There is a great resource page for this book at Homeschoolshare. We did not end up using many of these resources because I'm finding that we are learning so much from the living books we check out from the library about each country.  With the living books and the resources from Expedition Earth, I am not feeling the need to do a lot of extra activities with each book.   I had planned to do a simple origami project with the boys for this book, but we ended up rowing it on a week that began with Labor Day and ended with an out of town field trip, so we didn't get around to the origami.  

We did do a quick kimono art project that I found on Art Projects for Kids.  I enjoy doing these projects with the boys and thought our kimonos turned out great. As suggested in the project instructions, I made a cardboard "T" shape which we traced with a Sharpie marker to give us all a uniform starting point.  Then we used oil pastels to add the details.

Another Resource for Art

I picked up The Usborne Art Treasury by Rosie Dickins at the state homeschool conference I attended in June.  This is a treasure of a book.  It features 22 different artists and highlights one of their works.  It gives brief biographical information about the artist as well as interesting details about the featured work of art.  My favorite aspect of this book is that there is an accompanying art project to go with each artist.  I think we could easily use this as our primary resource for art study this year.  I am thinking about making up some study cards depicting each work of art that we can use to review the artists and works we've learned.  If I do so, I'll probably put a download link on the blog so you can access the file.  Does anyone else use this book?  And if so, have you enjoyed it?

You guys are awesome! (and one of my favorite resources on the web)

Seriously.  I have the best readers ever!!  It's amazing to me that this new blog has gotten over 2,000 page views within the first 12 or so hours of "launching".  That is totally because of all you Montessori Journey readers heading over here to see what's up at Walnut Hill.  Thanks for visiting! 

Since I don't want to disappoint you by having nothing to say over here, I thought I'd do a quick post to share with you one of my absolute favorite resources on the web for art projects, Kathy Barbro's Art Projects for Kids.  I used her ideas quite a bit for inspiration in my Montessori classroom, and I've also used them for ideas to do with the boys here at home.  Tonight I've spent quite a while browsing her site and pinning ideas (LOVE LOVE LOVE Pinterest) to use with the boys during our upcoming school year.  I think if you click THIS LINK it will take you to my Pinterest page where you can view all my boards.  I'd love it if you'd leave me a comment to let me know if this link worked and you could view them.  I am really new to Pinterest. 
In addition, LG made a project from her site today that he is going to enter in the open class of our county fair next week.  Last year my oldest son (SC) exhibited a project he'd made using an idea from her site as well.  I'm including a photo of LG's project because I think it turned out great.  I love how innovative, yet simple Kathy's projects are.  Additionally, since I'm not a trained art teacher, I appreciate her descriptions of how to set up the projects so children can be successful.  SC, my oldest son, gets a bit frustrated when trying to draw, but I think his confidence will increase if we try some of Kathy's projects and use her suggestions.  And you know what else?  After pinning a bunch of her ideas on Pinterest, I have a strong urge to start my own art journal and try out her projects.  In fact, I think I'll do just that.  It's going to be awesome to be a homeschooler!!

OK, here's LG's Starry City Night:

I love how this turned out.  It's a bit hard to tell, but in the middle "building", he drew a balcony with a person on it.  And in front of that building he drew a motorcycle.  So even though this was kind of a "canned" art project, he put his own details into it and it is truly a unique creation.  I want to get it matted with a thick white mat and frame it with a wide black frame.  And I want it to hang on my wall forever!!  :-)

One more thing (and for some reason I can't get Blogger to format any of the text after the picture with left margin alignment.........driving me batty!)......I think that grandparents would LOVE receiving any of the projects on Kathy's site as a gift.  I already have a few in mind for my boys to make as Christmas gifts.  It's never too early to start planning for that, right?