Art History Week

It's been awhile since we've done a theme week around here, toward the end of the year with president's birthdays, and holidays I just couldn't find a good time to fit one in, and then I just needed a planning break, and then March was crazy, and April got away from me. Plus, I can start to tell when the kids get burnt out on workbooks and Khan Academy and such, so I decided it was time to mix things up a bit. I'm hoping to get back on track, because I honestly think they get more out of theme weeks than anything else. 

I have quite a few theme weeks on deck to choose from, but I decided we'd do Art History 'Week' first. I use the term 'week' loosely, because there's too much to cram it into one week, and with our weeks running Wednesday thru Sunday, it gets a little funky anyway. I feel like we're simultaneously always doing school work, and never doing school work. It's a weird cycle. But anyway, here we are. All in all, this 'week' will total about 9 school days. 

I painstakingly poured over kids art books on amazon, and I came up with these two. It's a really good combo, actually. The first book has a two page spread on various artists, complete with a breif overview, some fun facts, and a famous painting (along with what the painting depicts and why!) It's called 'A Child's Introduction to Art', but it helped me a ton, because this is an area I'm totally deficient. Art history has never interested me much, and I have never taken an art class in my life (I was a band geek in high school instead of taking art). Anyway, I try and expose the boys to stuff that I'm not interested in, because maybe they are! They shouldn't never hear of something because it's not my cup of tea. The other book is just a coloring book of famous artwork. I could have probably googled each artist, found a coloring page and printed it out, but for $6 on Amazon Prime, I opted for this book instead. 

Each day we cover one (MAYBE two) art movements, and the boys each get assigned an artist from that time period. They might not be the most famous artists from that time, but I needed it to match up with my research of the various movements, the art book, and the coloring book. So, that's how we got who we got. I found these great 'Artist Study' worksheets on Pinterest, and printed them out. The boys were not into the 'how does this make you feel', so I let them write if they like the featured artists work  (and why/why not). 

And to work they go. Some of their coloring is better than others, but they do alright. 

We spend a bit of time talking about each movement, what the characteristics of that movement are, and where/when it took place. There are a few movements before the Renaissance, but that's just where I decided to start, since they've seen other art come up in our lessons by dad. (We did technically start with cave man art!) 

Then we cover (usually) three artists from that time period. The boys have all filled out an artist study and read about one, so then we share our information and everyone gets to learn about those artists. We cover what they're famous for, the medium they most like to use, and their most famous piece of work. 

I don't have a big enough board so the coloring pages and the artist studies up on the board are only the current days worth of artists. 

As we cover each artist, we have an activity for each one. I've tried not to make the projects ALL art related. Doing three art projects a day for 9 days is a bit much, and I'd never have anywhere to put things. Plus, some of the kids really dislike art projects (ahem, Peyton). I also tried hard to make them so you don't necessarily have to be artistic to like the projects, and  far Peyton's been pleased with the activities. 

Hayden's artist for Renaissance Day was Sandro Botticelli. He preferred to use tempura paint, and I had found a recipe on Pinterest for making your own, with egg!  

Now, back in the day, they had powered colors- but those are expensive, so we just mixed in a tiny bit of paint with our egg yolk. You only need a tiny bit and then we mixed it in with a craft stick. 

My yellow was super bright, thanks to the added yellow of the egg yolk. 

We each made one color, and then headed outside with our canvases. I didn't want to make them paint anything in particular, because none of my kids are budding artists in the typical sense. (Although I do think they do some cool work when it's more on the abstract side.) I found this splatter painting idea and thought it would be fun. 

Knowing this would be a bit messy, we headed outside. And holy moly was it SUPER hot. It happened over night, somehow it went from lovely, and low humidity to 1000% humidity and 150 degrees. Hello, Summer, I guess. 

Ellie was not pleased she got left inside, and decided to watch us from the window. 

 Unfortunately, my rubber mallet was missing, and the hammer just didn't have the same effect. So we improvised with a few other techniques. 

All in all, I think they turned out pretty cool. They dried with this awesome texture too, thanks to the egg. 

We moved on to our next artist, Michelangelo. In a nod to his work on the Sistine Chapel, we decided to do our own take on Fresco (painting with plaster, essentially). I had plaster of paris, which dries super fast, so I didn't think we could exactly paint with plaster, so we did a different take on it. I poured three square paper plates full of plaster and let them partially dry (you still want them a little 'wet' for the next part, so I couldn't do it too far ahead of time). 

 We got out our carving tools, and poured some paint. First, the boys carved a design into their plaster... 

...and then they painted it. 

Hayden's finished project... 

Calibs.... 

And Peytons.... 

Our final artist was Da Vinci, and with two art projects under our belt for the day, I decided to mix it up some. Fun fact: Da Vinci liked to write his notes backwards, so they had a quiz on the days lessons that was printed as a mirror image. 

Calib and Hayden took theirs to the bathroom mirrors to read the questions... 

Peyton meanwhile went with the 'work smarter, not harder' attitude, and sat down flipping the page over to read it from the back. 

We're trying to theme our meals a little too, although that's been tricky with some other events we've had going on (you can scroll to the bottom to see our Draft Day Pizzas!) We looked up some Renaissance recipes and came up with this crustini and potato and sausage dish. It was a really good lunch, the crustini had like this jam with bacon and craisins (a substitute for raisins soaked in vinegar) on top, and it was super good. It was sweet and salty, a lovely combo. The sausage and potatoes was what you'd expect, but still delicious. 

Asa also made a custard. It was like a plain pudding, nothing fancy, but totally awesome that he made it from scratch. (And thanks mom for giving us those cute little glass containers with the lids, they worked great for our custard!) 

The next day, we celebrated two art movements: Baroque and Romanticism. 

One of our Baroque artists was Rembrandt. He liked to use light and dark against each other, so our project for the day was to make silhouettes. I wanted to get prepped for it early, so as soon as they got up, I took the boys profile pictures. (Cant you tell Calib JUST got out of bed?!) 

Then, I printed them out. 

And cut them out. 

After everyone was much more awake, they had their lesson and the Baroque movement, and we got to work on our project for the day. They flipped their pictures over to the white side, and and I let them decide how they wanted to do the light/dark contrast. 

 Peyton painted a large peice of white paper black, and then painted his profile picture orange and blue (it was draft weekend, he was a bit Bronco's obsessed). 

Calib did the same thing, but colored his head in bright markers. 

Hayden made a comic in his head, and did darker crayon colors as his background. He kind of missed the mark on the contrast aspect of this project, but he had fun with it. 

Peyton and Calib's are really striking.  Though, I just realized I never got Calib's picture with his finished project. His took forever to dry, and he glued it together when I was out and about. Though, all the projects are hanging on the corkboard in the living room, so I'll get to it eventually. 

Our other Baroque artist was Diego Velazquez. He painted portraits for King Philip IV, and back then if Kings and Queens couldn't attend an event, they'd send their portrait instead. For his activity we decided to bring portraits to dinner of people who couldn't make the meal. Hayden picked FDR, and I went with James Monroe (since it was his birthday). 

Asa picked Philip Rivers. 

Peyton went with the guy who is responsible for Steam. 

And Calib went with Tepig. Which, is just ridiculous, because his brothers are super into Pokemon, and the only one he knows is Tepig. So, while Peyton and Hayden have stacks of cards they trade with the other neighborhood kids, Calib has a collection of five Tepig cards. 

Our featured artist for the Romanticism Movement was Francisco Goya. When Goya was 46, he went deaf, and all his paintings turned darker in subject. He drew a lot of monsters and skeletons, and used dark paint. Since his art changed so much after his hearing loss, we did a soundwaves experiment. 

We tied two different sized spoons to yarn. Then, you wrap your pointer fingers around the yarn and push them up against your ears. Next, someone gently taps the spoon with a wood ruler (or in our case, the only wood ruler we could locate- the yard stick). 

The vibrations you hear are unique to you (the people without the string hear a dink and nothing else- with the yarn, you get to hear a different sound and a continued ringing). It varies depending on how hard you hit the spoon, how long the yarn is, and what size the spoon is- so we tried it all kinds of different ways. 

We also talked about the explanation of the science behind it. Anyway, some Pinterest projects are cool, and some are flops- but this is a quick one worth trying out. Everyone enjoyed it. 

I guess I didn't take a picture of dinner, but we had shrimp po boys and homemade french fries in a nod to the heavy carbohydrate consumption of factory workers during this time (the Industrial Revolution). 

Today, our featured movement was Realism. We only had two artists (there's one day this 'weekend' we'll only have one- so Calib will have his artist profile that day since he didn't have one today), and one movement. But, it's Sunday, Asa is back to work, and with the public school kids home, they're constantly knocking on my door, so I figured a lighter day would be good. 

Our first artist was Edouard Manet (not to be confused with Monet, who is upcoming). There is a story about him that while in the navy, his commander had him paint fruit that was going bad so he could still serve it. Whether it's true or not, who knows- but it gave me an idea for a fun, easy activity to do at lunch time- Fruit Art! So, I cut up all kinds of fruit and veggies, and we all ate and made designs. 

I made a rabbit enjoying the sunshine. 

Asa made a ferris wheel. 

Calib's caterpillar was fun. 

Hayden made some guys standing by at cannons, which I thought was pretty inventive. 

And Peyton made a scene from star wars. Interestingly enough, for our realism activity, Peyton was the only one to design something that wasn't real at all. 

Our other artist for the Realism Movement was Winslow Homer, famous for his seascapes. The art book gives you some suggestions for activities, and this one came from Winslow's page. We made our own shades of blue (you know, seascapes) using various blues mixed with white and black. Then, the boys named their newly made colors! 

Winslow liked triangles, so Calib and Hayden painted triangles of their colors. 

Peyton preferred to write the names of the colors IN the colors, which I thought was a cool idea. (And fun fact: The boys are all wearing blue shirts today!) 

 This is our board so far, I think I'm going to have to do some rearranging to fit it all in, but I'll worry about that when the time comes. 

In other news, it was also NFL Draft weekend, which is like Christmas for Asa and Calib. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE football, but these two and their draft talk, it's like ALL they talk about for WEEKS leading up to the draft. They decided this year they were going to print out mock drafts to track how many various sportscasters got right. They also made their own. So, since I'm using the board for Art History, they taped all the mock drafts up to the doors. 

For the last few years, I've made NFL Pizza's for each of four teams playing to go to the Superbowl, but last year I made the NFL inspired pizzas for the first four teams in the NFL draft (You can find the recipes on Boboli's website). Of course everyone wanted me to do that again, but this year was a bit tricky. The top two teams traded away their picks days before the draft, so I wasn't sure which ones I should make. And one of the teams that traded up was the LA Rams, who just moved from Saint Louis. Since the recipes are based on the cities where the teams call home, I didn't have a LA recipe. We decided to go with the teams that traded up, and I found a California Pizza Kitchen recipe for a California Club Pizza, so I went with that. 

So here we have the California Club Pizza for the number one pick, the Los Angeles Rams. I did spread a little mayo as the sauce, instead of tossing the lettuce in it, as the recipe suggested. But the rest is pretty simple, just top a Boboli original crust with chicken, bacon, and mozzarella cheese, bake it and add tomatoes and lettuce on top. 

The number two pick belonged to the Philidelphia Eagles, after they too traded up. No surprise their pizza is a Philly Cheese Steak pizza. Basically it's steak, onions and peppers with cheddar cheese. But, there wasn't a sauce for this pizza either, so I used a little white queso type cheese for the base. 

San Diego had the third pick, and they had a shrimp taco pizza. The sauce here is a green salsa, topped with montery jack cheese and popcorn shrimp (the recipe actually calls for regular shrimp, but I had leftover popcorn shrimp and it worked really well). When it comes out of the oven it's topped with tomatoes, cilantro, and lime juice. 

The Dallas Cowboys held the fourth pick, and I was pretty excited about their nacho pizza. The 'sauce' here is refried beans. I topped it with some taco meat and taco blend of cheese before baking it. When it came out of the oven we added lettuce, tomato, black olives, and sour cream. It seemed like it was missing a little something to me, so I crushed some tortilla chips over the top. It was a good addition, I highly recommend it! 

The top four lacked a dessert pizza, and I only had to go one more pick to get one, so we decided to go with five pizzas. We've made the Jacksonville fruit tart pizza before, and it's always a hit. Instead of using the boboli crust, I make my own with yellow cake mix. You don't want to make it just like the directions on the box though, it'll be a little too watery to spread it out like a pizza crust. I just added two eggs, 1/4 cup of vegetable oil and a little water to get it to the consistancy I wanted. Then I spread it into a circle on some parchment paper. I topped it with some cool whip (mixed with a little powdered sugar) and some berries. This one is a keeper. It's SO good. Peyton even used it as a birthday cake last year. 

Overall, I liked the Philly pizza the best, with San Diego as a close second. But, the consensus favorite here was probably the nacho pizza. 

There was a whole lot of pre-draft coverage watching, and draft coverage watching. 

And Calib and Asa tried to keep track of  whose mocks were most accurate, but half of them only got two or three picks right. I'm going to remember this next year when they talk non-stop about mock drafts. The best one, in case you're wondering was Mike Mayocks with 9 correct. Calib topped most people with 4 right, and Asa was part of the three correct club. 

And Peyton was pretty excited when the Broncos moved up to take a new QB, Paxton Lynch. We'll see how he turns out. 

We were all up pretty late watching the draft, but the dogs just couldn't seem to make it. Ellie was passed out by 10:30. 

Friday and Saturday was more draft coverage, but Saturday is an all day event, so we went with a taco bar. Calib also had a basketball game, which he won (the first one!) so we were out and about to see that. Other than that, we've mostly been at home. 

Oh, and FYI, James Monroe's birthday drink = gross. 

That's all I've got for you. Our 'weekend' starts tomorrow, and I think we've got some plans, although the weather might not cooperate. 

Next Up: If nothing else, I'll be back in a few days with some more Art History Week. But hopefully we're at least squeezing in a date day!