Drawing with Children: Lesson 1, Part 2

For our art lesson this week we are still on Lesson 1. The entire lesson would be too much to cover for a typical five-year old in my opinion. I try to aim for thirty-minute lessons. We still haven’t actually gotten into the drawing lessons yet. We’re still learning how to look and identify parts of the picture.

This week I gave Lily her chart for the Elements of Shape. Using the Monart method a picture can be broken down into these five elements of shape.

 

• The Circle Family- anything roundish that is empty with no color. (i.e., the top of a glass, looking through a paper towel roll.)
• The Dot Family –anything that is roundish that is fill in with color. (i.e., a coin, the bottom of a cup)
• The Straight line Family – a line without a bend. (i.e., a yardstick)
• The Curved line Family – a line with a soft bend. (i.e., a rainbow, the letter “C”)
• The Angle line Family- a line with a sharp bend. (i.e., a spider’s leg, a staple)

 

 

Our lesson consisted only of illustrating the different elements of shape. We discussed each element of shape and then spent time drawing it. Throughout the next week we will move around in our environment, look at a picture, and analyze what we observe to see what elements of shape we can find while we look at the objects.

 

 

This lesson was difficult due to circumstances and not content. It is very important to have minimal distractions and I had a baby crawling up my knee and time running against me. I hope to plan better in the next lessons to give us a better experience. I, personally, am impressed at my ability as I begin to draw two dimensional objects by breaking the image down into these elements of shape.

 

Next week I will introduce Lily to a few different warm-ups that we will complete before each drawing lesson.

 

Just for fun, here are a couple of Lily's "pre-drawing lesson" drawings.

 

She drew this looking at the back of a marker box.

This is the bird she drew after watching me do the first lesson for Drawing with Children on my own.

 

Drawing with Children Lesson 1 Part 1

We found some time on Saturday to do our art lesson we weren’t able to do on Thursday. Nate was home and the other children were napping so it was the perfect opportunity for Lily and I to get thirty minutes of quiet time. I hope to journal our way through the lessons because this isn’t a “open-your-book-and-draw” type of art lesson.

Briefly, I’ll just explain that Drawing with Children uses the Monart Method for drawing. If you want to know more about this particular method, the book has an excellent explanation on the theory behind it. You could also just follow THIS link.

I am using Donna Young’s breakdown of the lessons in Drawing with Children for guidance. If you own the book, you will find it can be very overwhelming and confusing to figure out exactly how to teach each lesson. I’ve owned the book for a year, have read up to and through Lesson 1 twice during that time. I was so grateful to find Donna’s lesson plans for the book.

Our first lesson was to determine Lily’s starting level. I pretty much knew it would be Level 1, which is appropriate for five year olds. However, I allowed her to “test” through Level 2 to see how she would do. I was very surprised. Below are photos of her results. She did very well on Level 1 and almost completed Level 2. The starting level exercises are to duplicate the general structure of the image with the same components. Exact size and confidence of line are not important. Each image gets progressively harder as you can see. The top line is what she was duplicating in each of the lower lines. I made our own sheets with more space to give her an opportunity to fix it if she didn't like it.

 

Level 1 Exercise

Level 2 Exercise

After determining her starting level, we experimented with our supplies. We are using broad tipped color markers, fine tipped color markers, and a couple of very fine tipped black Sharpies. I hope to eventually buy some better supplies, but I thought starting out what we have is sufficient.
 

The purpose of this exercise was to see the different techniques the different markers can make. For example, do they blend and smear together? Do they make thick lines or thin lines? What happens when you use the side of the marker? What happens when you hold the top tip down on the paper for a few seconds?

 

We “experimented” for a little while. We had to make an agreement not to make any particular shapes but to just scribble lines. After a little while I caught Lily making hearts so we finished the exercise and she made a note for her daddy since all the supplies were already out.

I still have high hopes for the lessons in this book. And did I say how surprised I was at Lily’s duplicated drawings?

 

Post-baby School

Since this sweet boy was born...

 

 

...we haven't done much of anything except cuddle and kiss.

 

Lily and JJ were apparently Nature Study and Art deprived since I found them doing this one day all on their own.

 

Leaves, morning glories, and rocks...meet glitter and glue.

The Arts

Another exciting part of our CM education is the feast of arts that we will have before us. An appreciation for good music and beautiful art is something that was never offered to me in my public education. I look forward to introducing all of the wonderful composers and artists of the past to our children.

Girls at the Piano ~ Renoir

While we are not engaging in formal picture study in these early years, I am doing an artist introduction following the Ambleside Online (AO) schedule of artists. For example, for the first 12 weeks of our school year I will alternate six different paintings from Pierre-Auguste Renoir. My presentation in these early years is to merely display the artwork for two weeks on our kitchen table in a frame and telling them the name of the work of art. We are also enjoying looking at available children's literature about the artist.

 

 

As far as our own actual artwork, I have a craft area where the children have sometime to do free art. In that area we have markers, crayons, pencils, paint, construction paper, scissors, glue, and other art supplies the children can use with some liberty. They love to paint and I'm often not up to the mess...but I try to accommodate their desire to be artistic.

 

I, too, am exploring my own artistic side. With the hopes of one day going through the lessons with each of the children, I am working through Mona Brooks' Drawing with Children. The hope is that one day we can all present our art more realistically. My original vision was for this to be more help with our nature journals, but I am really enjoying working through the book and Brooks has some wonderful thoughts on how drawing can help in other areas of learning.

 

It is also very CM to do a composer study much like that of the artist/picture study. While we have not integrated this into our day with a specific composer, we have not completely abandoned the idea. While the children play daily, there is ongoing classical music played in the background in our family room. What it is...I have no idea unless I look at the TV. Each morning after breakfast I turn our TV to the classical music channel and close the entertainment center for the day. I love to have it playing lightly in the background as we work and play.

 

And that, my friends, is how we "do" the arts in the early years in our southern home.