homeschool art – Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs..

When Wyatt was given the opportunity to start a new intensive therapy this month, I had to rethink my whole plan for school. The new therapy is fantastic and definitely worth it, but it also reduces the instructional days down to three. As homeschoolers though, we can do this without missing anything, and this flexibility is just so perfect with Wyatt’s life.

However, having to rethink things actually took us on a wonderful new adventure together we wouldn’t have had. Instead of following his regular science curriculum, we have spent the month studying penguins, all the different types, where they live (Wyatt LOVES his new globe his grandma got him for Christmas), just everything penguin. So far my favorite penguin is the Little Blue Penguin; Wyatt’s favorite so far, he says, is the Chinstrap.

Penguins have even waddled their way into our reading! Our read aloud is Eve of the Emperor Penguins, part of the Magic Tree House series, and we are having fun reading it together in the middle of the day. It’s a nice little break in between subjects.

Art however, has dominated for fun this month. I created a Monet in the Winter Unit Study for Wyatt, and seriously, it has been awesome. Not to toot my own horn or anything. So far we have done in depth looks at Train in the Snow, and Sandviken Village in the Snow, but we have also looked at and discussed a few others, including The Magpie and The Road to Giverny in Winter. Next week our final art project and in depth study will be on Skaters at Giverny, and I am looking forward to it, but I will also be sad when we are done!

For Wyatt’s Train in the Snow study, we read Claude Monet: The Painter Who Stopped the Trains, and then Wyatt and Billy worked on a version of it together using oil pastels. I knew I wanted to include this one because Wyatt loves trains; Monet painted trains because his 8 year old son loved trains too! Billy helped with the form of the train and the rest was Wyatt. I love how industrial it turned out!

Next up for our in depth look, we studied Sandviken Village in the Snow. I love this painting, I think it is absolutely beautiful and tranquil and cozy. I had something a bit different in mind for Wyatt to do with this one….

I think it turned out so beautiful! It took us a heck of a long time to do together, but it was a very pleasant and fun way for us to spend a snowy, very cold afternoon. We had hot chocolate, and just cut and glued and planned. Wyatt loved this project more than I can express, and was so excited to show his dad when Billy got home from work. He did not like pulling the cotton ball apart to make wispy snow and gluing it down though, so I had to do that for him. It was just too sticky and weird feeling. He picked the locations for the pictures himself, with the exception of the bridge which I guided him to put into the correct placement to match the painting. Then we built a riser so that the diorama would be staggered in height, and I love the effect!

This section includes affiliate links. If you were to purchase something I would make a small commission to help support my family (and my son’s art habit!)

Resource Round Up:

I am excited to say that one of the Unit Studies we used was the one that I created!

Monet in Winter by Fox and Firth (me!)

Penguin Unit Study by Educating in the Wild

Eve of the Emperor Penguin Unit Study by McMarie

Traveling the States by The Waldock Way

And.. a few photos of Wyatt working hard at therapy!

I need to start thinking about February!!

This homeschool update is a combination of two weeks – I just didn’t have time to write an update Monday. Plus, our house is a giant mess due to our bedroom reno and it seems to be affecting my productivity.

We have been hanging out in the Southwest the past two weeks, learning about Arizona and New Mexico in Social Studies. It is a part of the U.S. that I am fairly unfamiliar with, only having driven through it one time on the way to Vegas. Let’s see.. we read Dona Flor as part of our tall tales series for September, who was new to me as well. I really enjoyed her story, as did Wyatt. It is the tale of a giant woman who has an equally enormous heart, for her neighbors and for all the animals. She makes huge tortillas, sings to flowers, and solves problems for her community. Dona Flor is delightful!

We also read about the potter, Maria Martinez who is known for her amazing and beautiful pottery. We tried our hand at making a coil pot; this was a lesson in patience for us both. Wyatt wanted to just create whatever he wanted, and I usually encourage free creativity, but I really wanted him to see the process of coil pottery. It was a struggle but between the two of us we made it. He ended up rolling the clay into snakes and making the base, I helped him etch the coils, and then I stacked the coils. He also used water to smooth areas, like the base. It turned out pretty cute!

We started outside but some pretty aggressive wasps forced us back in. Wyatt absolutely loved this project – his grandmother is a potter so I am hoping to have him make a project with her that we can actually put in her kiln and everything. She is the reason he loved this by the way. He thought it was neat he was doing something like Grandma. I had originally planned for her to do this with us but she had COVID! (She is recovering and doing well)

We spent a lot of time on the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum website. It has so much content for kids and educators! Wyatt had told me his favorite fact about Arizona is that they have javelinas, so we learned about javelinas, including what they sound like. He loves pigs so I am unsurprised that he liked javelinas. I really liked the Gila monsters, of course – which sound crazy! Wyatt colored and decorate a picture of a Gila monster, and I love that is totally disco with gold glitter sprinkled all over it. Maybe one day we will get out that way and visit!

In science we were talking about vascular plants vs. non-vascular. We focused on moss for our desk work, and then since we had been visiting the desert, I ordered some Rose of Jericho plants for us to observe. They arrive like little dried out tumbleweed balls. You add them to a wide, shallow bowl of water, and they spring back to life over the course of a day. If you don’t water them, they revert to their dried out version but can be “resurrected” all over again! I thought they were so neat I ordered a few extra to give away to some people who I thought might like to watch the process too.

We managed to squeeze in a quick field trip as well! Since we had read John Henry, I thought we at least needed to ride a train.

Then, the following week, this week, we read Federico and the Wolf, a really fun retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, studied New Mexico (and now I am obsessed with that state – I didn’t know much about it before), and talked a bit about Diego Rivera. Our week this week was a bit pared down from normal, due to the renovations in our bedroom. When you have a tiny house and empty everything out of one of the rooms, it ends up everywhere else. We just didn’t have the right space for some of my planned projects. But we did have a good week of learning, just less hands on than normal, and few more videos than usual.

What We Used:

This section contains Amazon Affiliate links. In addition to the curriculum I am creating for him, we also use curriculum from The Good and the Beautiful, The Waldock Way, and Blossom and Root for phonics, reading, science, and social studies.