Friday, November 03, 2006

Meet the Masters -

We finally got this worked into our schedule. I think we are going to really LIKE this program. It combines art history, appreciation AND technique in one easy to use program. I had heard it was expensive...but honestly $79 for a year is NOT bad at all when you consider that art classes were costing us $30 a month PER CHILD. To come clean, it was a REALLY good deal for me because the state of AK paid for it. ::snort::

The program consists of three steps: a biographical overview of the master artist's life, a study of his/her technique and then a project where the kids practice the technique - all at their level. Each lesson has a 20 minute (or so) computer slide show...cool.

In the future I think we'll do the slide show/biographical study earlier in the week and save the technique and project for Fridays. I'll also probably be jumping back and forth between the 5-7 and 8-9 projects.

Today we previewed the artists we will be studying (Van Gogh, Homer, Monet, Picasso, Cassatt, Mondrian) and made a portfolio. I thought they turned out rather nice and I was pleased with the children's creativity - in other words I liked theirs better than the samples. ::snort::

I think we could make a lap book of artists and art vocabulary....but maybe that would be to much hands on. We seem to be doing a lot of cutting, pasting and such this year. Of course, it's on Nolan's IEP (my personal IEP for the children)...."improve Nolan's fine motor skills, with the goal of holding a pencil". We are accomplishing that goal with things like "peeling potatoes, sweeping the floor (dustpan is hard), coloring, clay, cutting and pasting....".

Here are some photos (strange that 1/2 the photos from the camera didn't load to the computer):

Making our artist portfolios



Zander wanted to do this with us - he decided his job was punching stars (??) which I incorporated into his and my portfolios and sharpening colored pencils. Nolan worked hard on his....he had to do the border twice and chose to write out all the names though I offered him the option of gluing names on like Zander did. He made a fringe border on his - doesn't show up real well.




Arielle's on the left and mine on the right (yep - decided to do my own even before reading comments ::snort::)

Now on to create "deeper than ever beet root pie" ::snort::

7 comments:

Jodi said...

This program looks fun. Not a bad price at all, you're right. I'll look forward to seeing how you do with it. Hmm this may just be something need to add for us next year.

Anonymous said...

Delightfully creative!
A pleasure to see.

Anonymous said...

I was looking at this program for us but I didn't have anyone who had personal experience with it so I wasn't sure. I'm looking forward to seeing how you like it. It looks great. I love the portfolios!

Emily said...

Very cool and creative!

DeEtta @ Courageous Joy said...

Jodi and Steph...I'll let you know what we think as we continue on. At this point I like it well enough to consider teaching it in a group setting...but then again....I think my children would loose something if I was stressing about teaching to not just THEM but a room full. LOL

Darshia and Emily - thanks for the words.

Kristine said...

This curriculum has always appealed to me, and I'm thankful for your review--complete with photos! I'll be looking forward to hearing how it goes.

Elementary Art Curriculum said...

How was your experience with it? Overall? This is a new program that I recommend, The Great Artist Program. Great for kids but that is my experience.