Review: See the Light Art Projects

Art can be an intimidating homeschool subject, especially if you ARE NOT artistic. Like me. ;)

Enter See the Light, a company who offers a variety of DVD art lessons. This non-artistic mom was super excited to be able to review Art Projects - Poppy Collage.

About See the Light

Their motto, See the Light: Drawing Children to Him.  This ministry seeks to show children the love of Christ while teaching them skills along the way.  The have a variety of products. The DVD art classes teach children a wide range of skills and techniques, beginner to advanced. The Art Projects provide a years worth of projects drawn from famous artists. Finally, the Bible Stories DVD's allow your child to explore the Bible through Art.

Your student will learn tons of skills, history, and vocabulary with scripture and biblical principles woven throughout the lessons.

Our Experience

We received the Poppy Collage Art Project. Mackenzie would be working on an abstract poppy in the style of famed artist Georgia O'Keeffe.

The DVD is made up of an introduction and four lessons. Designed to for the student to complete one lesson a week, each DVD provides a month's worth of material. The lessons included: The Abstracted Flower Drawing, Tissue Paper Collage Technique, Layering Translucent Hues, and Fine Details to Create Interest.

We started off with the introduction, where we met our instructor, Master Artist Pat Knepley.  We were given an overview of the project, a list of supplies, and shown how to prepare for the first lesson. So we gathered our (easy to find) supplies, cut out a lot of tissue paper squares and were ready for Lesson 1.

In each lesson Pat Knepley demonstrates that week's lesson all while weaving a fascinating tale of the artists life. She included a lot of art terminology and wove biblical truths throughout the lesson. After watching each lesson we would start creating. Pat Knepley's step-by-step demonstrations made this a truly painless process.

These projects are a super easy way for a non-artsy parent to include art, artist study, and art history in their homeschool. The lessons were short, interesting, and easy to duplicate. There was nothing about them that we didn't love. Mackenzie liked it so much she wants to do another one in cool colors to match her bedroom.  The worst part? Deciding which project to tackle next...

Be sure to see the other great See the Light products that my Crew Mates reviewed by clicking the link at the bottom of the post..

F.Y.I.

Website: http://www.seethelightshine.com/

Age Range: 10+

Pricing: $14.99

Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the Famous Art

I'd like to start off this wrap-up by stating, while we got all of our school done and went on a nice field trip, it was not a good week.  My kids are driving my nuts.  I might start requesting brochures for boarding schools.  In Europe.  They have lost their ever-lovin' minds this week.

Good.  I feel better putting that in writing.  It's probably a good thing I'm going out with the gals tonight.  Without the ankle-biters.  

Now on to the actual schooling.

We're still studying "Go-Getters" in The Landmark History of the American People .  It's amazing at all the great innovators that our country has seen.

We also played a great American Inventors card game that I got from the Winter Promise American Achievements Activity Pack. (I use it to add some hands-on to our Sonlight studies.)  It had a couple of errors in it though.  Of course, they're they same errors being taught in PS so I guess it won't make anyone behind most of America. LOL  I did email them the corrections though.

We're finishing up Caddie Woodlawn and Old Yeller  and are excited to see what's next.

In Exploring Creation with Zoology 1 we're studying egg laying and bird "parenting".   Mackenzie has been very interested in how the chick develops and really liked the "air sac" activity that we did with an egg from our fridge.  She was thrilled to see almost all of the parts of an unfertilized egg.

LA is going well.  She moved up a level in her Spelling Power.  And she continues to learn about conjugating verbs in First Language Lessons.  Her only really hurdle in LA is summary narration.  We are using Writing with Ease  for our third year and she still hasn't really mastered a nice, concise summary.  Every once in a while she'll knock it out of the park and I'll say that is what you need to give me every time.  Then it goes right back to too many details, no mention of the main ideas or plot.  I still have to really hold her hand through this.  Sigh...

On the flip side, she really is a good writer.  She can write a nice sentence unless it involves something she read. LOL

We went on a field trip to the Chrysler Museum of Art and got to see some awesome stuff!

Mackenzie tried her hand at sketching some of the art.

We got to see a Mary Cassatt which was really exciting because we just finished studying her.

There was a bust and a photograph of Abe, who we also just finished studying.

Some gorgeous marble statues.

And some more big names like Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Matisse.

Be sure to head over to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and see what everyone else has been up too.

Weekly Wrap-Up

It’s time for the Weekly Wrap-Up hosted by Kris @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. 

This week’s Wrap-Up is part this week and part last week.  As I just posted about our field trip last week because I was just feeling lazy.  This offended my student, who feels that everyone should know what she’s been up too.

So here are the highlights…

Science

We are still studying birds.  Our “What food do birds prefer?”  ended.  The birds in our yard prefer sunflower seeds to mixed seed, but they will eat whatever’s available to them.

Here’s some of the birds that visited us.

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Now we’ve moved on to a bird bath experiment.  What do bird prefer? High or Low?  So far they prefer not to come near ours.

We did some experiments about how birds slow themselves down and waterproof their feathers.

View Full Album

Social Studies

We’ve been working our way through the Gold Rush and have begun to work our way to the events leading up to the Civil War. 

She finished reading Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman.  And we finished her first pocket in our History Pockets: The American Civil War.  We’re now on pocket two.

 

We also had a field trip to the Jamestown Settlement for homeschool days.  It as a nice review of what we studied last year.  And I got an awesome picture of the musket demonstration.  Check out our day HERE.  

Extras

She’s been continuing to work with lines in How to Teach Art to Children.  One day she had to create a drawing using two lines going in the same direction.  Here you see her beach scene, a walking stick, the sun & moon, and a pyramid scene.

Then she had to create a maze by curving lines around torn pieces of paper.  She found this one a little tricky.

She’s also continuing to enjoy our study of Mary Cassatt.  Our weekly picture study notebooking page is the only time she doesn’t gripe about writing. LOL

Lastly, she had her first soccer game of the season and the Yellow Bumblebees won!!  Mackenzie even scored a goal!

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Weekly Wrap-Up

One month into grade four and we’re still going strong.  So far no major hang-ups or attitudes.  Even the Wee Tot has been relatively agreeable, for her, and we’ve managed to get school finished in a timely manner each day. This is one happy mommy.

Bible

We’re still reading through the Book of John and learning along with the original 12 disciples.

Math

We’ve moved on to dividing by 3s and 5s.  Division is continuing to go well.  And to think she was nervous about it.  Reviewing our multiplication facts all summer sure helped.

Language Arts

We reviewed dictionary skills, verbs, and diagramming  in First Language Lessons.  One of her new skills in FLL is proofreading and learning proofreading marks.  She likes being able to “check” mistakes in the assignments.

Spelling Power and Writing With Ease continue to go well.

Social Studies

Mackenzie finished reading Sing Down the Moon.  While she was very upset to, again, read about how horribly our country treated Native Americans, she was very happy with the ending. 

She is now reading Freedom Train, about Harriet Tubman.  That, along with our read aloud William Wilberforce, has began our study of slavery.

True to her nature, Mackenzie is horrified and feels some guilt that her ancestors would treat people so cruelly.  She has such a tender heart when she reads about other people hurting.

In spite of the difficult topics she is, at some level, enjoying the readings.  She said of our Wilberforce readings, “I’m glad that some people were willing to stand up and help.  This book has given us lots to talk about hasn’t it?”

We also started our Civil War History Pockets.  We started with pocket two, on slavery.

Science

We finished lesson two, on what makes a bird a bird.  We concluded the lesson with an experiment about what food birds prefer.  Basically, we needed two identical bird feeders, with the only variable being the type of seed in them.  We filled one with a basic seed mix and the other with just black oil sunflower seeds.

Much to our dismay, not one bird has approached either.  Not having a bird friendly yard is making this study a difficult one for us. LOL   There is nary a tree or a bush in our tiny yard to attract them.

Extras

We are continuing our artist study on Mary Cassatt.  We just love her work.  This week she did a notebook page on one of her picture studies.

  In honor of our bird study in science, we decided to draw and paint birds using a lesson from Deep Space Sparkle.  We opted out of the feathers because I didn’t want to dig them out.

Mackenzie starts piano lessons next week so we purchased a digital piano for practice.  She is loving that.  Not bad for a girl who never touched a piano before today.

She also started soccer this week.  It was alright.  I’m a little disappointed with the coach.  He’s a very sweet man and I know she’ll have fun but he doesn’t seem to know a lot about soccer.  Her coach last year taught them so much.  They did drills of all sorts, learned plays, and had a great time.  Her skills improved tremendously last year and I was hoping for the same.  Maybe he’ll surprise me, but I hope they’re playing more and sitting less next practice. LOL

And we enjoyed our last Water Country day of the season.

Be sure to check out the other wrap-ups over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Homeschool Village~Heart for the Arts

This is my first link-up with The Homeschool Village and, ooooh, how I love the topic. Art has always been something that I've tried to incorporate into our learning but I haven't always been as successful as I'd have liked. The last two years, following the arrival of our youngest, have been the most difficult. Our wee babe is, shall we say, a handful? Spirited? Demanding? =o) We were able to get a little more accomplished mid-way through last year, so I'm hoping we're over the hump.

We'd better be because I've got a lot planned for this year. =o)

First we're going to attempt more formal artist and composer studies. We've always had some level of art/music appreciation with our Sonlight books. I was inspired to attempt this more purposfully by the art and music studies from Jimmie's Collage. Her blog and lenses are a wealth of information on how to get started. I've been scouring them and making lists for months.

We're going to study four artists and four composers this year. I plan on alternating between one artist and one composer each semester. I know Charlotte Mason advocates studying for longer periods but she doesn't live with Kayleigh. I'll be happy if we actually accomplish half of what I have planned. LOL

Artist Study: Edgar Degas, Mary Cassat, Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet
Composer Study: Mozart, Beethovan, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky

We're going to be doing picture studies, creating art from Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters (Bright Ideas for Learning), notebooking, listening to music, and field trips.

Our art program will be rounded out by:

Piano Lessons at the Young Muscians of Virginia
I Can Do All Things art program~ As a non-artsy person, I cannot praise this program enough. The bundle comes with the book, all the supplies needed, and a dvd instructor. I'm learning right along with my daughter.
How to Teach Art to Children by Evan Moor

Some of my favorite sites that inspire me are:

Art Projects for Kids~lots of fun and simple projects that will teach great skills
Deep Space Sparkle~more great art lessons
Jimmie's Collage~a wealth of info and inspiration for your artist and composer studies and, really, homeschooling in general

I've been stocking up on new art supplies at A.C. Moore. I'm loving their store brand line and the prices attached to them. We've got watercolors in all forms, pastels in all forms, quality paper for painting and sketching and a whole bunch of other goodies. And don't forget to print out your 40% off coupons.

We were very excited with our loot so we did a little project to test it all out.

It was a lot of fun but mommy needs more work mastering the art of mixing liquid watercolors. LOL

You can peek at our other art resources (books and cd's) here, if you'd like. Just scroll down to the bottom.

And that will, hopefully, be our year. =o)