Friday Fine Arts Fiesta!

0 comments Posted by Kristine at 9/01/2010 11:35:00 AM


Starting very soon, and continuing through the end of the semester, we're going to try something new for "Fine Art Fridays." Rather than trying to coordinate art/music/poetry/etc. with our history studies, we're going to focus on modern Latin American art/music/poetry (thus, my daughter has re-named the day "Fiesta Fridays"). We will continue to study the Medieval arts during history.

Since we're all usually dragging by the end of the week, we needed something lively and fun to look forward to, a break from our usual routine - hence this rather unconventional idea. The idea is that we'll study and discuss a piece of art, read a little about the artist, have some dessert (inspired by Latin American flavors), read some poetry, and then do an art or craft project (while listening to music, of course!). Once in awhile there will be a video segment to watch as well.

I haven't worked out all of the details just yet, but my plan is that we'll have two primary artists to study: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo (not going into their lives too deeply since certain aspects wouldn't be suitable for children); we'll also touch on Pre-Columbian art, Jose Guadalupe Posada and study Mexican folk art (a source of inspiration for both artists), especially that pertaining to Our Lady of Guadalupe and Dia de los Muertos.

Below are some of the initial ideas I've compiled; I'll also be borrowing from the resources listed in my posts Fiesta de la Virgen de Guadalupe and El Dia de los Muertos. My hope is that we'll be able to further enhance this unit by a road trip to New Mexico to view some folk art first-hand!


Books

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera:
Folk Art:
Art Projects
Lesson Plans and Miscellany
Websites

Desserts
This entire book is online here.
DVDs*

*Pre-screening required; not all are suitable for children.

     

Music






Poetry


Pre-Hispanic America (Book cover for Pablo Neruda's Canto General), Diego Rivera

Pablo Neruda:

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Fiesta de la Virgen de Guadalupe

0 comments Posted by Kristine at 9/01/2010 11:33:00 AM

© Adocel

On this day, December 12th, people from all parts of Mexico make their way to Mexico's chief religious center at the Basilica of the Virgen of Guadalupe, located in Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo, a northern neighbourhood of Mexico City. There, they will celebrate the Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe (Our Lady of Guadalupe) with a mass ceremony and a traditional fair in her honor.


The Dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe became an national holiday in 1859. At the plaza the fiesta starts after the mass ceremony with delicious food, vendors selling crafts and clothes, along with many performences of music and dance. In other parts of Mexico, similar festivities are organized with some unique variations of the celebration. In some places, altars of flowers are built in her honor. Other parts have traditional food prepared like buñuelos, raspados and tortas as well as activities like parades, rodeos, and bullfights. (Source)

Books/DVD


Religious Goods
Websites






© ektarama
Crafts

Tomie dePaola has a great story on his website about Our Lady of Guadalupe as the Patron of Artists and I could not agree more! Without a doubt, she has been inspiring artists (Catholic or not) for the past 500 years. To explore Our Lady of Guadalupe in art:

Articles:
Books:




Art/Craft Projects:
Supplies:
Food

© Holiday Jenny

Music







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Week in Review: 08/27/10

7 comments Posted by Kristine at 8/27/2010 12:28:00 PM


This week marked our second week of the new school year, and clearly, we've still got some issues to work out. Somehow, I had greatly underestimated the amount of time each subject would take now that I have only two students (and very speedy students at that!). As a result, our days have been embarrassingly brief. Granted we are waiting on our Math and Science books to arrive, but even still, the work is going way too quickly. I'm still trying to figure out what we can do differently in the future! 

Religion





Language Arts

Language arts seems to comprise our central focus this year, though this wasn't intentional. It's also a bit of a mess at the moment (what's new?!). I realized mid-week that my choice for composition wasn't the greatest (it was the first composition book that I'd found on Google Books and is probably too advanced), so I am planning on finding a suitable replacement this weekend.

I love the supplement for teachers, Methods and Material for Composition by Alhambra G. Denning and would like to utilize this somehow, maybe. I wanted something in the style of Primary Language Lessons, but better - I think Vital English (Intermediate text here) may be the solution, but will be exploring this further.
  • Handwriting: Two worksheets per day (M-Th).
  • Spelling: One lesson per day from Word Power Through Spelling. We love these books, but the words have proven a bit too easy. I may need to bump them up a level or two because they're not being adequately challenged.
  • Vocabulary: One lesson per day (M-Th) from Vocabulary 5 for Young Catholics.  
  • Grammar: One lesson per day from Voyages in English (nouns). These books proved hugely disappointing. We have chosen to ignore the rather uneven lessons at the beginning of the book and instead are strictly doing the grammar exercises in Part 2. 
  • Composition: Three exercises from A Composition-Grammar. This week's lessons covered: the nature of a sentence, affirmative or negative thought, declarative or interrogative thought, and exclamatory or non-exclamatory thought. Also, the rules for paragraphs and quotation marks, and, oddly enough, "the study of lettering" (this issue of The School Arts Magazine from October, 1919 proved a helpful supplement.)
  • Reading: Two lessons from This Is Our Heritage (6th) and These Are Our People (5th), two lessons  from Reading 5/6 for Young Catholics, Comprehension Skills and one lesson each from Reading 5/6 for Young Catholics, Thinking Skills.
History

History is, at the moment, a bit of an experiment. Because I was very late in deciding what we would study this year, I didn't get the necessary texts and supplements figured out in time (and I was broke by the time I had a plan!), so I had to improvise.

Finally I decided that we would wrap up the Middle Ages and start on American history in January. I divided our first semester (18 weeks) into two week "units," created an outline of what needed to be covered, and set about finding resources with the help of my favorite Google Books. Our "spine" is The Story of Old Europe and Young America and proved especially helpful because, at the end of each chapter, it lists suggestions for additional reading (all easily found using Google Books). So, for each unit, I printed the applicable portion from our spine, printed the supplements, and organized everything in my history filing crate. When this was finished, I went back and printed out maps, worksheets, coloring pages, etc. for each unit and filed them in the crate also. Activity ideas were written out on 3 x 5 index cards and dropped into the appropriate files.


At the start of a new two-week unit, the reading goes into one of these 3-prong poly folders (for history, they share the folder, but for other subjects, I've provided each with his own "text"). Each morning I count out the pages to be read and flag them with these handy-dandy Clip-rite clip tabs; they know by now to read from "tab to tab" each day. Supplements go into the folder's pockets, to be completed after reading.


What I love about this system is that it allows me to keep the amount of daily reading fairly even, supplement with the material I choose, costs virtually nothing, and it eliminates the stacks of extra books/supplements we were always scrambling to keep track of. Plus, if I change my mind about a particular supplement (which happens often!), I can switch to something else easily and without guilt.

The first of our history units also proved the most awkwardly put together, since I was picking up from the middle of a chapter in our spine, yet somehow it worked out well enough. We studied the Vikings and also schools, music and literature in the Middle Ages. In addition to our spine, our supplements included stories from Viking Tales by Jennie Hall, European Hero Stories, England's Story, and When Knights Were Bold (my favorite!), all by Eva March Tappan. On average there was 10-15 pages of reading per day. Earlier, I had created some notebooking pages on Vikings, but we never even used them, instead opting for oral narration. We listened to plenty of Medieval music and watched Terry Jones' Medieval Lives: The Minstrel on YouTube. Our read aloud, which we started only this week, was Adam of the Road.

Science

The beautiful weather this week (finally, after a non-existent spring and a long blazing hot summer!) brought us outdoors. Prior to starting the week, I had no immediate plans in place for science. This year we'll be studying Chemistry, but I haven't ordered all of our books yet.

It just so happens that this year we were blessed with the appearance of a mysterious vine (weed), which quickly took over a portion of our back fence. A little research revealed that the vine was called Sand Vine Milkweed, (also, Honeyvine) a very important source of food for Monarchs. Despite warnings about the invasiveness of the vine, I decided to leave it alone since I love how sweetly it smells and don't mind it's appearance in the least. As the summer progressed, it very quickly became the most popular place in our yard for an astonishing variety of winged creatures - from every type of bee imaginable to a dizzying array of butterflies.


All abuzz! (Click on photo to enlarge)

This week has been no exception, so at the very last minute, I decided that we would do a brief nature study on butterflies and moths.

Once again, Google Books came to the rescue. I quickly put together a 47-page Nature Reader with relevant stories and information. We've been casually observing the insects all summer long, but now the plan is to have the kids spend a little time formally observing and identifying the butterflies and sketching in their nature journals, followed by some light reading. We will be continuing with this plan next week, so long as the weather holds out. Should I happen to require additional reading, The Insect Folk: Butterflies and Bees (Vol. 2) by Margaret Warner Morley appears to be excellent.






Math

As with everything else, Math was not quite all I'd hoped it would be. Foolishly, all summer long I'd assumed that we had the necessary books for the new school year (I'm certain I ordered them last year!). Since we're using Singapore and it's very, very straightforward, no pre-planning was required. When I discovered, much to my horror, that I did not have the necessary books, I had to come up with a new plan. So, for the past two weeks we've been doing daily math drill worksheets and working on memorization of the multiplication tables through 9 (this was much needed!). Hopefully our Singapore books will arrive next week!

Personal Notes

This has been a quiet week all around. I've been battling some sort of flu/virus all week, so have had zero energy, which never fails to annoy me.  Hopefully I'll bounce back this weekend because we have a big busy week ahead!

This week I read A Breath of Air by Rumer Godden, which was a light, enjoyable read. That said, I think I preferred her novel In This House of Brede, which I read last week. I'm eyeing Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy to read next. I also read Saint Clare: Beyond the Legend by Marco Bartoli (which I'll be reviewing shortly) and re-read The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.

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