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:)
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| 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? |
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| 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 |
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| One of his famous pieces |
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| 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. |
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| What Donatello thought was his greatest statue |
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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) |
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| 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. |
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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;)
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| boys had free range of their painting choices |
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| hard at work |
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| final work |
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| 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.
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| MarioFan measuring the snow on the deck! |
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| 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:) |
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| 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.
