Wet on Wet Watercolor painting

Baby's painting.




Brother's



Brother's

We are finally back to painting! I have such a hard time fitting everything in to the week, that this activity tends to slide. Since this is a math block and we are only doing one number a week, I thought I would really make an effort to get back to it. The kids really love it. First Brother painted with Blue and yellow, then I mixed the left over paints together to give baby green. Baby is only 2.75 years old and only needs one color anyway. Kristie Burn's Earthschooling April curriculum for preschoolers included a story with a green frog hopping all over the page. Baby loved the story and it helped him to fill the whole page with paint instead of just a bit of it.

Here is her link http://waldorfenrichment.weebly.com/index.html

As you can see, we are still having a "fractal" type issue on the sides of the page. Hopefully I get that figured out soon.

Friday - First form drawing lesson!

Poor Baby had to ride in the stroller again today. His fever has broken, but his energy is still low and he has a nasty cough. He is finally eating again though! Brother and I had a fun walk though, he was running all over the place!

Our nature story was the "A Busy Sleep" story again for the third and final time. After the story we rolled around on the floor pretending to be bears again. Then we had drew our first form! I was digging around in our art closet and noticed that we have a black board on one of the easels. So, I pulled it out for Brother to try his form on. Then he drew on his paper.



This is our first form. It was my first time through the process, so I had a lot of my own learning to do. Completing the process brought up more questions for me, so I watched the Enki form drawing part of the DVD that came with our curriculum. Don't ask why I didn't watch it before we did the form. Anyway, now I know that he should not color in an up and down motion, but always start at the beginning and complete the form in one movement. Next time!

I included Baby in the process by letting him draw on the chalk board after Brother was done and then gave him paper and crayons and set him up at the table to draw. I didn't really have much of a choice, Baby was determined to be a part of the action.



Here is Brother's wet on wet painting. He thought about Masha and The Bear while painting it.

Friday

Today we went outside for our regular walk/form walk/circle and out door playtime. There has been a lot of digging in the digging spot lately! After snack I read the weekly selection to Baby and then read the Enki Nature Story "Busy Bears" to Brother. We were a little disrupted when Daddy came in for lunch. I think I am going to read this one again next week.

We baked muffins today. The kids are getting really good at it! They are taking turns between wet and dry ingredients much more patiently now. Baby really loved stirring and Brother is measuring much more accurately.

After rest time, we went to a games day in a local park. We hadn't been in a long time, and only one other family showed up. Hopefully it was just an off week. For some reason, Baby is really sensitive to Winter Weather. He stays really close to me and tends to whine a lot. My goal is to stay comfortably for one hour. Baby was pretty comfortable for almost an hour. Since the other family had left, I called it good and we went home too. It would have been pretty strange to make him stay for another five minutes when he really wanted to leave! He is dressed appropriately, so I am hoping he will outgrow this sensitivity.

When we got home, I gave the kids quiet time. While Baby napped, Brother and I painted.



This is a wet on wet using red and blue. To set the mood I sang "Winter White" while I began painting. He said this is "King Winter.



This is his second painting. There is a little bit of unpainted paper on it. When I suggested that he paint his whole page, he informed me that this was his painting, he had already covered the whole page on the first one and that this one was his free painting page. It is so fun to see him excercise his personal power.

older Kindergarten Week #3 Saturday

Whoever thinks that homeschoolers are locked in the house all day, sitting at a desk "schooling" is crazy! We are so busy socially that I can hardly get things done at home. Anyway, the boys watched daddy doing various house projects today. This afternoon we were able to complete our wet-on-wet painting activity scheduled for Friday. Both boys painted at the same time, so I didn't get to paint myself. I guess it is good that we are not doing led paintings yet! It is so surreal. Brother became lost in the colors today while painting, experiencing color qualities instead of trying to draw a particular object. I did start singing a song about red leaves falling before he started painting so that could have influenced him. Or it could be that we have had a strong rhythm for quite some time now. I am surprised and quite pleased though. It is so exciting to see processes occurring that I have only heard about!

Wet on Wet Painting - Hold form?

It was a beautiful day! In the morning we met with friends at the park for a nature walk, followed by lunch with Daddy and rest time. Our afternoon activity on Friday's is wet on wet painting.

 While baby was sleeping Brother and I did our wet on wets using yellow and blue. I painted my picture first. This is a huge learning

experience for me because I don't feel like I am very "artistic" or "creative". I figure that i will learn along with the boys. 

After I model the picture, Brother is supposed to create a picture
inspired by my modeling as his lesson. Then he is free to do what he wishes with a second picture. And it started out that way. He was painting with blue and singing about a snowstorm. Then all of a sudden it changed and he went into a color experience of painting with paint, and then wiping it off with a rag. He did that over and over. After a while he folded the paper as well, creating a huge paint, water, folding, wiping experiment. This was not the lesson and left me with the conflict of "hold the form" and stop the process or let it go on. I felt like the experiment did have value, so I chose to let it go on. His energy was very focused and intent. But after he was finished with this picture. I had him do the second one as the lesson. 

Here is the one from his actual lesson. I like it a lot better than mine. 

Baby woke up part way through the lesson. I just had him use Brother's old paint. What I think is neat is that when he was making those lines, he was pretending to saw with the paint brush and was making sawing noises. His whole painting experience was very cute. He had a lot of fun and really just lived in the color.