Fourth Grade, Fine Arts, Set Three

Recorder

• Practiced previous songs
• Learned fingering for notes E and D
• Started learning Old Brass Wagon

Bracelet

• Chevron bracelet

Badges

• Native American badge

Fourth Grade, Fine Arts, Set Two

Recorder

• Practiced Hot Cross Buns and Good News!

Bracelet

• Made a Basic Diagonal Stripe bracelet 

Textile Arts Badge

• Made a color wheel with paints
• Made a wall hanging

Cake Decorating Badge

• Spring themed cake

Fourth Grade, Fine Arts, Set One

Recorder

• Learned fingering for notes G, A, and B
• Learned "Hot Cross Buns" with the harmony (pg 3)
• Started practicing "Good News" (pg 4)

Bracelet

• Practiced the right and left hand basic knot
• K. made a Double Chain Knot bracelet

Cake Decorating Badge

• K. made cupcakes and decorated them for her birthday party
• K. made a rainbow cake by coloring white frosting red, yellow, and blue, then she made orange, green, and purple frosting by mixing the primary colors.
• We talked about complementary colors on the color wheel.

Third Grade, Fine Arts, Set Seven

We continued making birthday and anniversary cards for our family.

Third Grade, Fine Arts, Set Six

Here are a couple birthday cards we made.

We are also continuing to creep forward in piano.

Third Grade, Fine Arts, Set Five

We continued making birthday and anniversary cards. We did some with stenciling and some with paper pricking.

K. asked to do piano again, so we did a few pages.

We painted a plaque with a fortress and wrote our favorite verse from Psalm 91 on it.

Third Grade, Fine Arts, Set Four

Fairy Tales:

• Favorite Fairy Tales Told in Germany retold from the Brothers Grimm by Virginia Haviland
• The Cat and Mouse in Partnership
• Hansel and Gretel
• Martina the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale retold by Carmen Agra Deedy
• The Bossy Gallito retold by Lucia M. Gonzalez
• Rabbit Wishes by Linda Shute -- why rabbits have long ears

Birthday and Anniversary Cards:
We mixed equal amounts of water, dish soap, and paint in a glass, then used a straw to blow bubbles. Touching the paper to the bubbles made neat designs on the cards. After they dried, we could add decorations. Here are a couple we made.

Third Grade, Fine Arts, Set Three

We made birthday and anniversary cards. I had purchased Ed Emberley's Picture Pie: A Cut and Paste Drawing Book. Making the cards this way was time consuming, but fun.

Third Grade, Fine Arts, Set Two

Fairy Tales from other countries:

• The Wooden Sword by Ann Redisch Stampler -- a Jewish folktale from Afghanistan
• What's So Funny, Ketu? by Verna Aardema -- a folktale from Africa
• Wisdom Stories by Mary Joslin -- stories from various countries that show the strength and frailty of human nature and consequences of foolish choices.

We started working on drawing a picture of whales. This is a drawing project in a Nature Friend. We didn't finish, so we will continue working on it in Set Three.

We made the birthday and anniversary cards. I picked up Ed Emberley's Great Thumbprint Drawing Book at the library. It is great fun, very creative, and allowed both K. and I to make very cute cards!

Third Grade, Fine Arts, Set One

• We went to see The Nutcracker in December.
• We made cards for the February and March birthdays (slow months with only three birthdays each!).
• We made valentines.
• We have done five pages in piano books.
• I read various fairy tales to K.
• Beauty and the Beast Retold by Philippa Pearce (we are going to see the ballet in April)
• William Tell by Leonard Everett Fisher
• The Magpie's Nest by Retold by Joanna Foster
• Favorite Fairy Tales Told in France Retold by Virginia Haviland (we just started this one)
• We are also baking. We've made:
• Cookies
• Cranberry bread
• Pumpkin bread
• We made a Wire Button Tree.

Second Grade, Fine Arts, Set Seven

Piano

• One page a week

Art

• We completed the Art Museum book.
• K. has been enjoying painting with watercolors.

We didn't really do much with fine arts during this set of weeks. We had some things come up and K. was working on some other projects, so I decided to let it slide, although she was looking through the My Art Book and showed me a couple things she wanted to do. We will try to do them during our winter break.

Second Grade, Fine Arts, Set Six

Art

• We completed pages 20 - 24 in the Art Museum book. I found a video on You Tube of someone carving (time lapse) and we watched it.
• Making a Assemblage (My Art Book)
• We read the book The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau. We copied one of his jungles from My Art Book this year, so when I saw this book at the library, I picked it up. It is about his life. An interesting book with great illustrations.

Piano

• One page a week

Sewing
I looked on-line for hand sewing projects for children. Then I let K. choose one. I found a pinterest board that is just felt ornaments -- so most are hand sewn. K. and I were looking at the pins and saw a few things that she would like to make.

• We made Flower Broaches.

 

• We are working on Felt Pumpkin Magnets. They are almost finished.

Second Grade, Fine Arts, Set Five

Art

• We completed pages 18 and 19 in the Art Museum book. We looked at abstract paintings in the book A Child's Book of Art by Lucy Micklethwait
• We gathered nature supplies at a park to use to design a face. 

 

 

• Paint to music -- I used a Beethoven's Wig CD and we painted while it played.

Piano

• One page a week

Sewing

• We completed the little dolls we started in the last set. Here is a link to the pattern. Here is the one I made. K. gave hers away to a friend.

Second Grade, Fine Arts, Set Four

Piano

• we did one page each week during this set of weeks!!

Art

• My Art Book -- Town page 54 -- we haven't quite finished our paintings, but we are continuing to work on them in the evenings. K. had her own idea of what a town looks like, but she still used shapes. This top picture is K.'s and the bottom is mine. If I had made K. do the project exactly how the book said to, it would have turned into a craft rather than art. Art calls for being creative, so when you are doing art, don't insist that your child follow the instructions to the letter. (my opinion)

 

• We did the chalk picture during our week off.

 

Sewing

• I found a cute pattern for little felt dolls. We have cut them out and have started sewing them together.

Second Grade, Fine Arts, Set Three

Crocheting:

• We worked on crocheting one day.

Piano:

• We worked in the piano theory book, completing one assignment which was three pages long.
• We practiced the next page in her lesson book.
• K. practicing the next page in the lesson book.

Art:

• We decorated K.'s artist's smock for her costume in a program at church.
• Art Museum book -- pages 12, 13 -- we talked about a still life, found one in a book, and K. drew one.
• We finished painting the rocks that we started painting in Set Two.
• We did the Paint a Night Sky in My Art Book

Second Grade, Fine Arts, Set Two

During week one K. finished her pillow and began crocheting another chain. I was going to teach her the slip stitch, but she just wants to make chains, which is really better because she does need to get better at making her chains all the same size. She is improving!

During week two we did two pages in her piano book.

We went to The Skirball Museum this week and saw a portrait and a seascape and answered the questions in our book, Let's Visit the Art Museum. I have picked up some books from the library which we will use either instead of or with visits to a museum.

This week I needed to make a couple sock monkeys. I had enough socks to make three, so K. is making her own. I have all the machine sewing done and she has done some of the hand sewing.

 

Here is her completed sock monkey. She did all the hand sewing, except for the mouth. We sewed it on the wrong side the first time, so she asked me to sew it on the right side for her.

We spent this week on art. We worked in her book, Let's Visit the Art Museum. I picked up these books at the library:

• Mousterpiece by Jane Breskin Zalben -- a fun book about art
• Katie Meets the Impressionists by James Mayhew -- gives the opportunity of seeing famous paintings and learning a bit about artists in a fun way. This is part of a series of books.
• My Art Book by DK Publishing -- this is a book of art projects inspired by masterpieces. This is a book I want to do a lot from. This week we worked on decorating a rock. The projects all look fun and the instructions are very well written.
• Discover Great Paintings* by Lucy Micklethwait -- this book has reproductions of famous paintings along with questions and observations about each one. There is also information about the artist and the painting.
• Come Look With Me: World of Play* by Gladys S. Blizzard -- this book has reproductions of paintings, a few questions about each one and then a few paragraphs about the painting and the artist.

* We only looked at one or two pictures in these books.

Second Grade, Fine Arts, Set One

Our first week K. made (with help) her sewing needle case. This is from Sewing is Fun. We just worked on it 30 minutes each day. K. really enjoyed making it and when she finished it she was very excited that she had made something. Yes, it looks like the first sewing project of a seven year old, but that is exactly what it is -- and that's okay.

 

 

This week we worked on crocheting. I really like the book Kids Learn to Crochet by Guy and Hall. The illustrations are drawn and large so you can really see exactly what you are supposed to do. K. learned how to make a slip knot on Monday. On Tuesday she learned the chain stitch and made five chains. It was quite frustrating. Wednesday I had her make ten, Thursday, fifteen, and twenty on Friday. She has gotten much better and is impressed with how long her chain is getting. I think I will require her to work a little on it each day so she doesn't forget how.

 

With just a short time spent crocheting Wednesday through Friday, we were able to do four pages in the Alfred's Basic Piano Theory Book Level 1A, so we are almost caught up to where we should be.

We were back to sewing in our third week. In the first section of Miss Patch, you make a pillow. We made the pattern, cut out the fabric, and K. got a few inches sewn. We had two park days this week, and so those days we didn't have fine arts. Thankfully I allotted the fourth week for "unfinished projects". On Monday K. took her crocheting and added about 40 stitches to her chain.

During the fourth week K. completed sewing two sides of her pillow. Now I need to discover where I hid the fluff to stuff it with!

We read pages 5 - 11 of Art Museum. We will be going to the art museum next Sunday, but we saw some paintings on display at the library yesterday and she was able to tell me which was a landscape and which was a still life. We also did another page in the piano theory book, so we are caught up to where we should be.

First Grade, Fine Arts, Set Seven

Well, when I said we were going to work through the piano books at our own pace, I wasn't kidding! We have gotten to page 16 in the first book, but K. is leaning the concepts, and enjoying the time on the piano.

First Grade, Fine Arts, Set Six

• George Fredrick Handel
• George Handel by Mike Venezia -- this is a biography written to keep the interest of young children
• Hallelujah Handel by Douglas Cowling -- this is a fiction book about Handel's concern for the orphans of London. He was involved in raising money for the first orphanage in London.

First Grade, Fine Arts, Set Five

We have fallen behind in our schedule, so I plan to catch up during this set.

• Franz Schubert
• I could not find any books in our library system that would interest a first grader, so we will just be using Child's Own and listening to cd's.
• I picked up a cd that has "Trout" Quintet on it.
• Frederic Chopin
• I picked up a set of cd's that has Chopin's Nocturnes. They are great for going to sleep.
• Chopin by Ann Rachlin -- this is in the Famous Children series; at the end of the book it mentions the Minute Waltz, Raindrop Prelude, and Cat Waltz. I searched in our library system and was able to find all three, but it is probably easier to just find them on YouTube.
• George Fredrick Handel
• Handel and the Famous Sword Swallower of Halle by Bryna Stevens -- this book brings the mood and magic of Handel and the seventeenth century to life in its spirited and humorous retelling of this biographical tale.
• I picked up a set of cds called The Handel Experience -- it has selections from Water Music, The Messiah, Joy to the World, and many others.