A First Attempt At Artist Study

There have been several elements of the Ambleside Online curriculum that sounded unrealistic to me.

One of those components was artist study.

The nice thing about AO is that you can follow it as closely or loosely as you want.

However, I figured that since it was created by people who have been doing this homeschooling gig much longer than me, I would follow it as closely as possible and then start picking and choosing what did and did not work for us.

Today was our first stab at artist study.

The girls made skinny chunky monkey cookies.

We had a tea party.

And talked about 'Paul Revere', a painting by John Singleton Copely.

Um, it was delightful!

I even found our discussion intriguing.

I purposely didn't read anything about the painting so that this week it would be all our own thoughts and speculations.

Piper thought he was holding a teapot he had found and thinking about whose it might be.

She asked why he was in the dark which led to a discussion about where the light was in the room and what time of day it was.

I pointed out the tools that are on the table and Piper thought that maybe he was fixing the teapot.

Tait gave her two cents every now and again (mainly echoing what Piper would say!).

In the end, they were over the moon about drinking real tea at their artsy tea party and even happier when I explained that this would be a weekly occurrence this school year!

So we are drinking tea and talking about paintings by famous artists, listening to classical music in the van, weaving potholders and reading more books than I ever thought possible.

Either I've gone off the deep end or we're officially Amblesiders!