Weekly wrap up 11/30/18 -- Donatello and a snow day!

For art MarioFan and his friend are learning about Donatello.  It was pretty hard to find any art projects for this particular artist that I thought the boys could do or would be interested in.  Since neither boy is going to into the art field and mine in particular is not a fan of art I struggled to come up with a project but in the end I found one that I like and would stretch the boys creativity:)

Our local library didn't have any books on this artist so my friend had to do an interlibrary loan to get books.  We never did find a picture of the actual artist--many there isn't one?  

We always try to give the boys a brief history of the artist before our lessons.  We also like the boys to examine the art work

One of his famous pieces

We spent a little time understand how he created his sculptures.  Donatello was one of the first artist to understand perspective and attempted it in his various sculptures.

What Donatello thought was his greatest statue

I decided I wanted the boys to create a sculpture but they could be a little more creative with it.
I bought a dry foam sphere and wrapped it in foil and then we hot glued it to a terra cotta pot.  (Need to wrap the foam in foil otherwise the clay gets dried out to fast and it creates creaks in the clay--I learned this the hard way when doing my sample piece)

Next we added air dry clay to the form and I asked the boys to create a face of their choice.  My only instruction was there had to be a nose, mouth, ears, and at least one eye.  

Other then obsession about their hands being dirty they did a pretty good job!

It took about a week for  the clay to dry.   By the next lesson the sculptures were ready to paint.  We had a little bit of cracking in the clay but we made do and glue things as needed;)

boys had free range of their painting choices

hard at work 

final work

My sample -- kids thought mine was rather creepy looking....I have to agree:)

We got our first snow day this year already!  Firedrake was thrilled to have her first ever public school snow day called.  We got about 5 inches in all.

MarioFan measuring the snow on the deck!

Kids put to work on shoveling the driveway and side walk.  For payment they demanded hot chocolate and freshly made pumpkin bread-- I think my husband also paid them:)

Dad supervising the work!

Elvis is settling in more in the house and we have even got the old boy playing a little.

Dog and Cat still aren't friends but at least the ignore each other for the most part.  Luna the dog is super jealous if we play with the cat.