One challenge with Schooling at Home with 3 of the kiddos not being yours and thus being on a time schedule, is how do we fit in all the subjects that require 1:1 instruction for most of the lesson? Well, we're figuring it out...slowly but surely. :-)
One way we have success is that we have a group lesson each morning and one afternoon a week. Typically it's art, history, or social studies. The really nice thing is that the kiddos get to touch on a lot that they might not get a chance to if they were just doing what was assigned to them!
Art is a favorite, of course. It's one of several aspects that I like about this program vs. our local public school. The children start "art" in elementary instead of middle school and high school. Another aspect is that after the basics of art have been taught/reviewed, they begin to correlate their art project with what they are learning in History! I've seen a BIG difference with my own 2nd grade kiddo who did NOT like 'art' (mainly because language arts had the word 'art' in it! tee hee). Between our art lessons and our Draw.Write.Now, he's really starting to take a liking to drawing and art in general. So neat to see! The mother of the 1st grader has also mentioned that her child's attitude toward creating art has changed also. :-)
This was actually an afternoon group lesson...art-around the kitchen table...but on a side note, we did try our less mess group lessons in the living room in a more relaxed state but it wasn't working out for us so almost all our group sessions take place around the table. :-)
Here we were "introducing" the color wheel. Why I say "introducing" is because it was an introduction lesson for 3 grade art but anyone that has been with me during preschool years (which all of these kiddos have) has already been "introduced" to the color wheel.
I first gave them a cardstock copy of the color wheel. I can not share the color wheel document since it's copyrighted, I'm sure, but there are many options on the Internet...here's one.
We actually talked about the primary colors and secondary colors first and traced around the triangles first with crayon and wrote them down on a simple chart...you can download the chart here. It was very handy to have a cup full of crayons with the colors they needed right at their space and to also have a crayon sharpener handy. :-P Then we moved onto intermediate and complementary colors. As you can see, cool and warm colors had not been completed. We actually broke this activity up into 2 sessions. The chart will be cut and glued to the back of their color wheel. The children then used red, blue, and yellow to paint their color wheel. Actually, that was the initial decision but time was flying and the younger ones were having a difficult time mixing the colors to get 'true' colors (or at least relatively 'true' colors) so we did bring out some additional secondary paints to mix for intermediate colors. A., the 4th grader was the only one that didn't "cheat" a little bit!
The second session we focused on cool and warm colors. We noticed that we can pretty much split the color wheel in half and see the warm colors on one side and the cool colors on the other side. Children chose a shape and created a collage with either cool or warm colors.
Left to right and top to bottom...
9 yrs, 8 yrs, 7 yrs, 7 yrs, 6 yrs, 3 yrs
Simple and fun!
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