Art Show

We started back up with school these last two weeks, and it's been a little difficult getting back into the groove for all of us. I miss those whatever days, while the kids are having trouble settling and sitting and doing calm, contained things like reading and writing and math. The longer I go on in this homeschool venture the less inclined I am to haul out the "Oh for goodness sakes just get on with it!" remarks, mostly because I frequently sympathize with their wiggliness. It IS hard sitting and working on algebra when the wind is whisking around the yard and the clouds are scudding across the sky and the sun is blinking on and off through the window, just begging us to come outside, but my attitude is if we break for every fabulous Nature Call we won't ever get much technical work done. Which gives rise to all sorts of Aesop Ant/Grasshopper imagery in my neurotic little brain. And being overly neurotic about the future is that's never a good thing.

But it also means that I'm trying harder to find amusing things for them to do, amusing things that involve art and music and creative fun. And here was one of them...

We started with this picture. It's in a book I have. It's a van Gogh. A chair. I placed the book, open to this page, on a bookstand in front of the kids and gave them all a sheet of brown construction paper. I opened up my Reeves Oil Pastels. "Copy this picture," I said. "Take any aspect you like, or copy it exactly."

And so they did.

Here's FDPG's:Here's Dominic's:And here's Max's:
Nice, eh? I was quite taken with them.