Artist Study ~ Leonardo da Vinci [1] (PRINTABLES)

For the past week, we’ve been looking at the works of Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo is a painter, inventor, scientist, sculptor... and just about anything!  He writes from right to left because he is left handed.  And his notes are written in mostly mirror-image for secrecy of his works.

To supplement our study, I made art cards.  Through Google Image, I selected famous da Vinci’s artworks/writings and put them in cards.  We discussed each work, what he likes and doesn’t like about it, talk about his observations and by end of it he selected his favorite:  The Last Supper. 

While we do this, there were a few things that my son needed me to discuss like because he keeps on asking why (like, why is it called The Last Supper).

If you’re interested with the cards, you can download it here. You can print it twice to use as 3-part cards (Montessori approach).

I also talked about the museums that houses some of da Vinci’s works.  And he was surprise that we’ve been those museums and has in fact come face to face with Mona Lisa.

Here’s a picture taken at the Louvre, we went here when Mavi was 2 years old.  Mona Lisa was impressive, small and so dark.  I really wonder what’s the hype.  Since it’s barricaded it’s impossible to see the magic of da Vinci’s hand by just looking from afar :(

We also went to Vatican Museum when Mavi turned 1.  They house some of da Vinci’s works too.

And here’s Florence, Italy... the birthplace of da Vinci! This is the exterior of Uffizi Gallery, they have a room dedicated to da Vinci’s works. A

 

And there goes the first part of our study.  Next post would be my son’s paintings of his favorite da Vinci works :)

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Artist Study ~ Leonardo da Vinci [2] (PRINTABLE)

We’re done learning about the life and works of da Vinci, it’s time to have our own version of his works.

Starting with Mona Lisa.  We talked about the colors used of da Vinci and of what it is to paint a portrait.For his own rendition, he picked colors green (for the trees on the background), orange (background), purple for the color of the dress and black.  He draw the face first as a guide then applied paints.

And of course, not forgetting the famous smile :)

And here’s my son’s Mona Lisa

And my son didn’t stop there, he wanted to paint The Last Supper as well.  As I mentioned previously, this is his favorite painting of da Vinci.

 

 

And here’s what it looks like after he added paints :)

In line with our study I created art cards of da Vinci’s works that we used as 3 part cards.  You can download get it here.  I advice you should read the first part of this post to learn how to use the cards.

Happy Sunday!

 

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Art History: Renaissance Art | Leonardo da Vinci

Sharing with you our Leonardo da Vinco art projects.  Took us a while to finish this unit as we have tons of Leonardo works to explore.  Below, Vito offered to paint my portrait the Mona Lisa style.

Artist Study (FREE Picture Cards)

EDIT:  There was a typo-error in the Leonardo da Vinci file, I already fixed it :)  Thanks!

In line with our Europe study, we’re also going to look into some famous European people… and I’ll focus on the famous painters from this continent.  We’ll revisit Degas, Michelangelo, Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci. 

I'm sharing the picture cards we used in the studies, kindly click the artist's link below for the download.

Works of Edgar Degas
Works of Michelangelo
Works of Leonardo da Vinci

Artist Study: Leonardo da Vinci

Artist Study: Edgar Degas

Artist Study: Pablo Picasso

We’ll be doing some Monet or Van Gogh next week. 

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Artist Study ~ Leonardo da Vinci (Making Portraits)

I am rebooting our Artist Study and we’re starting with portraits.  Now this project was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. See our previous activities with Leonardo da Vinci here.

To know more about this genius artist and for inspiration, we first examine his life. We used this amazing book from the library, Levelled Biographies: Leonardo da Vinci[aff. link].  We enjoyed the book, and Mavi loved learning about Leonardo, not just as an artist but as a scientist as well. The book is appropriate for kids as it has a simple way of telling a biography and has lots of pictures in it.

Aside from learning about Leonardo, we also talked about portraits. I showed Mavi random samples in the web.  Then I took some photos of him outdoor to demonstrate what’s the difference between a portrait and an ordinary picture.  (You can also do this with your kids!) After which, we started making our portraits.  We used the DSS lesson for  the tutorial and some inspirations.

To create portraits, we used two mediums:  oil pastel and tempera paint.  Mavi wanted to use oil pastels (I never liked them!) as this is what they mostly use in school. So I guess he’s quite confident with it.

As you can see I also tried creating my portrait using the pastel but the black which I used for the outline started to mess with my peach coloured face! I just have to stop because my portrait is starting to look messy.

Now this is Mavi’s portrait made from oil pastel. He’s so happy with his work :D 

Second try, we used tempera paints.  I like using paints! Easier to handle and less messy. 

And this is our finished product :) 

Tempera paints, oil pastels and other art materials can be purchased through Amazon, Target or any craft store available.

Mavi pointed out he doesn’t know how to make a nose and a mouth … so we’ll he'll be practising more.

Now this is an activity that you can easily do with your kids.  You can use any medium available, pencil, crayons or watercolour.  Discuss what is a portrait and what do they imagine to be in that portrait.  You can also talk about the back of your portrait, whether they wanted to be indoor or in the park, under the sun, the beach etc.

Like my post? More activities here!

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Art History - Medieval Art

For Medieval Art, we made illuminated manuscript.  This art project was inspired by the Book of Kells (Ireland), a famous artefact on display in Dublin. Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin created around 800AD.

Famous Artists and their Artworks Bundle Set1

If you are learning about famous painters, art history and doing art appreciation in school, then this learning pack is definitely for you!  I finally published our first set of FAMOUS ARTISTS and their ARTWORKS in 3 part cards and picture book formats (to be assembled).

This Montessori-inspired Famous Artists Pack is perfect for learning about the works of arts of some of the world's greatest artists. It contains 12 famous painters from Renaissance to Modern Times. These materials are perfect for your Art History subject and Artist Studies (Montessori).

Europe Study Part III (FREE Volcano Cards)

And this is the last part of our European Study series. You can read Part I and Part II here.

So first we had Major Rivers of Europe.  We used this printable Major Rivers of the World to look at the longest rivers in Europe, traced how long they are and how does it affect the economy of the people.

Here Mavi is plotting the location of the rivers.  We are also identifying the countries that some of these rivers flow through.  The map seen on the picture was randomly "googled".

 

We also talked about the active volcanoes in Europe.  My son was really really interested on this one as they were having lessons about it in school too.   To avail the FREE file of Volcanoes in Europe please click the image below.

 

We used a map again to plot the location of the volcanoes.  He discovered that were a number of active volcanoes in Italy and got a little bit scared that we used to live near it.

           

 

 

  

We also did a few math activities one of which is relating Euro to Montessori Golden Beads.  We talked about how each Euro bill corresponds to Golden Beads and using the currency we played pretend shopping :)  Of course the little guy was the cashier to practice simple mathematics like addition.

Here he is counting the total cost of Mommy's purchases.

                   

And lastly, the subject that I've been wanting to revisit for the longest time, Artist Study.  Using the books and cards that we have we talked about the famous painters in Europe.  We did a couple of Artist Study a few years back and worked on Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Picasso and Degas.

I've always wanted to try Monet.  My initial plan was to bring him to the park so we could paint the flowers there in the field, but lately the weather has been really really bad so I guess that has to wait.  Instead, we painted the Poppy Fields of Monet using a  picture card as a guide.

I told him that Monet is an impressionist, that his paintings look like blobs or blurry and that it doesn't give you an exact detail of the subject but just an impression.

And here's our first try of painting like Monet :)

 

And here's Mavi's rendition of Monet's The Poppy Field.  What do you think?

 

And that concludes our Europe Study series.  Hope all of the series of post I have for this lesson have given you enough idea to start your Europe Study as well.

For more FREEbies and learning aids, please check The Pinay Homeschooler Shop and Downloads.

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Beautiful Children's Biography Books

I lately discovered a beautiful biography picture book series that captured the interest of my 7 years old.  This is by far our favourite, the GENIUS series by Isabel Munoz. I am not a big fan of the Little People (too short and less info for my kids’ taste) so I continued looking for kid-friendly bio books and I came across this series.