Impressionism

 I love Homeschool Freebie of the Day.  They have given us enough free downloadable resources, links, videos, radio shows, etc, etc, etc., to crash my computer.  A few weeks ago, their free resource of the day was a link introducing me to Practical Pages by offering Nadine's Famous Impressionists Artists Pages.  She is one prolifically creative and generous homeschool mom.  I'll be exploring her 'back issues' for awhile.  Earthgirl is coloring her paper dolls from Ancient Rome today.

The Impressionists resource looked pretty good to me, so I suggested to my fellow mini-co-op moms, "I'm thinking about doing Impressionists in April,"  to which they replied, "Oooo...Impressionists."  (Aside to the mini-co-op moms:  Shall we never invent a better name than "Mini-co-op"? I got nuthin'.)

We will be hitting the Impressionists for 3 weeks, building  lapbooks using PP's minibooks, and doing a little impressionism of our own. Yesterday I introduced the history of the Impressionists as a bold modern group of painters frustrated by the judgments of the Salon in Paris. The children learned about painting en plein air (outdoors in whatever light was available), and how radical the concept was of painting contemporary subjects rather than models dressed up in Greek and Roman garb. I showed them pictures in library books, focusing on Monet, Sisely, and Cezanne.

[I learned that none of the Mini-co-op moms know French to help me with pronunciation. Most of what I know of pronunciation of French words comes from "The Aristocats," "Veggie Tales," and "Madeline."  Mas oui! Naturalment!]

We painted our own version of Monet's Impression: Sunrise, the painting that gave name to the movement.  The term, "Impressionism," borrowed from the painting title, was meant as a slur by the newspaper that covered their first art show.

Though these photos show what looks like a controlled, quiet class, I always feel like we are wild and crazy when we are painting.  I always end up wearing more paint than the children.  And this is just 7 children - how do art teachers with a whole classroom keep up with all those students? I'm surprised to see the picture below looks pretty normal.  In reality it was a puddle of paint!  Ack!

I love the way I can give exactly the same instructions to the all seven children, yet the pictures all differ.

Pretty impressionistic for a second grader, don't you think? Next week, more impressionism!