We made a descision and now I'm a little lost

Thanks Meg! That's a great point of view. The idea that children's art classes stifles them makes sense. I can see how giving a child a pile of hangers and saying, "why don't you see if you can make something out of these." is very different from giving them a pile of hangers and saying, "You will now build a person. You have one hour."

It's just something I never thought of before.

 

I suggest you read the book, "The Art Lesson" by Tomie dePaola. He's one of my favorite children's author, and it's about the "first" art lesson he had as a kid in school. I loved it!

 

I haven't read what everyone wrote but do you have a art center by, they do alot of children class and the prices aren't bad.
drama, church do alot of Christmas plays......

 

Actually, they are super expensive here. :roll: Very irritating.

 

I mentioned this thread to my mother today, and she had two other suggestions...

1. Throw away all your colouring books! (I'm still not sure I agree on this one, but I have to say my kids were never that interested in them anyway.)

2. Do check out the art galleries, and focus especially on modern art, because they're using the same materials your children will see around them in everyday life.

Modern art doesn't mean non-representational, by the way. Just anything that's being made by artists right now. You can call ahead to ask about suitability, depending on the age of your children.

I remember my mother sending me outside with a notebook and pen, telling me to just draw whatever I saw that I thought was neat. Then she'd look at my pictures with me, and we'd discuss what I'd seen.

My son has an LD that affects his fine motor coordination, so instead of forcing him to draw, I've encouraged him use a camera. It's also art, which he knows because he's seen art shows that feature photography.

This is one of his photos (I hope it comes out right - I've never tried posting pics before!):

 

Neat photo!!!

And, as we all know, Charlotte Mason was big on Nature Drawings, lol!!!

 

As a writer, I am in total agreement about copyright laws. People don't understand the effort that goes into making something creatively, and the minute amount of money received by the artist. I just don't get how people think working for free is acceptable. An artist, really, works just for tips with no base salary.

Anyway. My oldest is only 8. Our primary basis for PE is just playing outside every day, really. We hike occasionally - we're a few miles from the App. trail. The kids take swimming lessons, just because I am too terrified to try to take four of them and teach them to swim myself, but they are considering joining the swim team now that they are learning actual strokes. We did basketball and we'll be doing soccer in the fall.

My daughter takes piano lessons. That covers us on music, mostly.

Art is primarily "at home", "do it yourself". We've been known to do some "structured" art projects; when we studied Columbus, we painted a huge mural on brown paper and hung it on our wall. And my kids are always drawing; give them some plain paper and a pencil and they're quiet for an hour. I'm more concerned with nurturing that than with giving formalized instruction, although we do check out some "how to draw" books on occasion, lol. I want to hit some art museums but we're rather far from them at the moment, and I'm not sure how well my 3 yo will cope with a drive and then an art museum. We're working on it, though.

 

Do you have a day like...

Sorry posted wrong!

 

My little guy has loved learning about Eric Carle. All we did was borrow a biography on him from the library. We looked at the book, I read some of the info to him, (not all of it, it was a HUGE book!) and in the middle was a fold out segment on how he creates his art. So now, we are going to create art, Eric Carle style. Because his style is so creative and free flowing without any restrictions. He just paints random colours on tissue paper. In whatever format he chooses. Once they are dry he cuts out shapes and constructs his picture. That's how he made the Very Hungry Caterpillar.

WHen my daughter was at PS her 3rd grade teachers was awesome. She was also an artist (who was thinking about taking a sabbatical from teaching and moving to Italy for a year to concentrate on illustrating.) She taught the kids how to scribble draw.

Which is quite literally scribbling. The kids made some awesome pictures. She would hand out supplies then read the Hobbit to them while they created. The pics were amazing. If I can find the girls picture in the files I will scan it for you. She said the confidence in their own creativity really grew after this exercise. So many kids freeze up when you say to them, okay let's draw a dragon. But when you show them different ways to draw, like scribble, they suddenly think, oh wait, hey I CAN do that!

 

We don't "do art" but we do study the artists and their work. For instance this term (which is 12 weeks long) we are studying Raphael. For the first three weeks of the term we read a bioigraphy called Raphael: Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artist. We got it from the library and Grace loves the illistrations and the comic book feel to some of the pages. Next, each week on Friday we study one of his works that I have already chosen (I choose 6 each term) from this website but right now I can't remember the name of it. We study the print together and we each pretend we are blind while the other one describes the print in detail. Then she gets her own 4 x 6 copy of it to put into her own special photo albumn. By the end of the first year she will have studied 18 prints from 3 different artists. This is how we do art.

For music this term we are studying the orchestra. On Friday we would read a book about the orchestra from the library and then listen to Bernstein's Favorites, also from the library.

PE she just plays and runs with the girl next door and rollerblades, rides her bike, climbs the huge tree in our yard and sometimes play 4 square with her sister and friends. When we move in two months she will take a tumbling class.

 

They must not know how very simple it is to get permission to use copyrighted music. Now, it might be a snag since they sell the videos...

Look into the local YMCA for gym. A local health club here has hs PE, too. Some Gold's Gyms have hs gym, too, believe it or not.