The Life of a Running Momma: Weekly Learning Theme: Fine Art

The art museum in our area does a free day for families the 2nd Saturday of each month. I knew about it from school and had been wanting to take Carter for a while, we just ended up being out of town or having company each weekend. Finally the 2nd weekend in March we would be in town and I was determined to go! With that fun event planned out I decided to make the week leading up to it based on art so we could use the trip as our field trip.

Listed below are the objectives I am focusing on for the themed weeks. I have updated our objectives from the original ones we focused on because Carter mastered those skills. I plan to continue to implement activities to practice and reinforce our previous objectives while putting more emphasis on our new objectives. Some of them won't necessarily be targeted with specific activities during our weeks, but I wanted to list them to help me remember to practice them continually. The highlighted objectives are ones Carter received exposure to during our theme this week:

Take turns in a simple game.
Understand the meaning of mine, his, hers.
Group objects based on a category (sort by defining feature).
String beads or other objects.
Count to 3 and understand what the numbers mean.

Activities/Movement:

We used various different mediums for creating artwork. Carter colored with crayons and markers, he drew with sidewalk chalk, he painted with finger paint as well as watercolor, and he created sculptures out of Play Doh.

Coloring with sidewalk chalk.

Trying out the sidewalk chalk on a tree.

Using watercolors.

It's so cool to watch him use paints!

He didn't want me to take a picture of him finger painting, so here's the aftermath.

I told Carter photography is another form of art. We then looked through some of Ty's photographs from college (he has an associate's degree in photography). Then we looked at some famous photographs on the internet. Carter's favorite photo was one of Ty's that focused on a train. It was so cute to see him really study the photos. Then I let Carter take some pictures with my phone. Of course he wanted to take pictures of Harper!

Looking at some photos from one of Ty's photography classes.

Really studying one of the photographs.

One of Carter's pictures of Harper.

We talked about how dancing is another form of art and then I showed Carter youtube videos of people dancing. We watched ballet, clogging, and Russian dancers. Carter enjoyed them all. When we were finished we got up and danced. Carter actually tried out some of the moves he had seen in the clogging video and it was adorable!

We were able to find lots of books from the library with actual artwork as the illustrations. In the back of each book it would list the artist's name and the title of the piece. I went through and told Carter the names of all of the art pieces and we talked about how artists usually name their art work. Then I pulled out Carter's binder of art work and pulled out pieces one at a time, asking him to name them. It was so cute what he wanted to name them and I wrote the names of the art work on the back of the paper for later use.

Looking through his binder of artwork.

After naming all of his art work Carter and I created a museum in our hallway. I made little cards with the title of the piece and we taped them underneath the artwork. Carter stood on a chair and helped tape up each picture and the name tag. When we were finished I told Carter when we're in an art museum we can't touch the art and I showed him how to do a "museum walk" with his hands tucked behind his back. We practiced walking down the hall studying the art work while doing our museum walk. Carter was so excited to show daddy when he got home. Then Thomas stopped by to drop his dogs off for the weekend and Carter showed him. We played classical music in the background and Carter did his museum walk perfectly, it was adorable!

Taping up his artwork and name tags to create our art museum.

Practicing his museum walk.

We read Look! Look! Look! at Sculpture and talked a little bit about what sculptures are. Then I pulled out Play Doh for Carter to create his own sculpture. I was impressed because later in the day we walked to a school by our house to play at the playground and Carter saw a statue out front and pointed at it yelling "sculpture!"

Of course he wanted to create a snowman sculpture!

Craft:

While looking through famous art pieces I pointed out to Carter that many artists paint pictures of things in nature. We then went outside to search for something in nature that inspired us. Carter chose a piece of bark and I chose a small purple flower. We sat outside and created art work using our piece from nature as inspiration. Carter even put his bark under his paper in an attempt to make a bark rubbing.

Making a rubbing of his bark.

Using the bark as inspiration for his art work.

We looked at famous geometric paintings and works of art such as "Snail" by Matisse. Then I showed Carter some shapes I had cut out for him to use. I had him sort them based on color and then shape. When he was finished sorting, he glued the shapes down on paper to create a piece of art. While he worked he talked about what shape and color the object was that he was gluing down. I didn't even prompt him to do so. When he finished I asked him what he was going to name his artwork and he said, "Shapes", what a perfectly simple name!

I saw a cute idea for re-creating Van Gogh's "Starry Night" using an apple core here. We loosely followed the idea. We didn't use anything other than an apple core and finger paint, skipping out on adding the construction paper houses. Carter loved making the stars in the sky and then I showed him how to make some white swirls also using the apple core and he loved that. Then we mixed the paints we already had out to create the bush/tree.

Carter's version of "Starry Night" by Van Gogh.

Special Snack:

My original plan for a special snack was to use vanilla yogurt and food coloring to mix colors. I forgot to write vanilla yogurt on our grocery list so I then forgot to buy it at the store. Instead we used icing. I read through White Rabbit's Color Book by Alan Baker. I had 3 seperate piles of icing on a plate. We started with the first one (yellow) and Carter added the dye while I stirred. Then we read on to see what color rabbit got in next. As we added the second color (red) I asked Carter what color the icing was going to turn. He excitedly yelled, "red!" Then I started mixing the icing and he said, "Whoa, ownj!" He definitely thought it was magic when we mixed 2 colors together and got a different color at the end. At the end of the book he had picked up on the fact that 2 colors mixed together would make a new color. He'd watch really closely as I stirred and the minute you could start to tell what color they were going to make Carter would yell it out. When we were finished we dipped graham crackers in the icing and ate it for an extra special dessert snack.

Make Believe:

We read Not a Box and Not a Stick both by Antoinette Portis. Then we went outside and Carter found a stick to play with. He pretended the stick was different things and even enjoyed using it to poke around in some dog poop he found, imagine that!

Poking around in dog poop with his stick.

Songs:

We listened to a classical CD that I had along with a classical music station on Pandora. I told Carter that music is also an art form. He enjoyed the music and it was very relaxing.

Field Trip/Interactive Experience:

We ran the St. Patrick's Day fun run and 5k on Saturday morning and then headed straight to the art museum for their free family day. Carter enjoyed walking around showing off his museum walk. He'd tuck his hands behind his back and walk slowly. At one point he stopped and stared at a dog sculpture with his hands behind his back and a woman who worked there commented on what a great job he was doing making sure not to touch anything. Carter's favorite things were a see through floor with colored lights that changed color underneath, an abstract painting done with bright primary colors, and any paintings or sculptures of a mom with a baby. We went outside and walked through the garden area that had some sculptures which Carter really enjoyed. We looked at fish in the pond and sat to eat a snack next to a waterfall. When we finally headed back inside we went to an area where they had an art project set up for children. They provided wires for children to push through a mat and string around each other to create a sculpture. Carter enjoyed creating his and then started asking for lunch so we headed out.

He oohed and ahhhed over this painting of a bridge.