Our Family Project

On Fridays we get together with some friends for an art lesson and playtime.  We've been getting together since September, and each month one of the moms takes a turn teaching and providing the art lesson/project.  Last month the mom did a lot of Halloween crafts, and the month before that the mom did a unit on Mosaics.  I've loved having our own little art gallery in our loft, filled with all of the children's art! This last Friday was the first time that the group met here for a lesson/project of my choosing.  I have a book that introduces children to the great art masters, and then provides an idea for an art project that helps them to learn how the artist created their masterpiece. I decided that since Claude Monet's birthday is this month, that our first art project would be about Monet.  After reading in my book about Monet and the associating project, I looked online for more ideas.  One of my good friends posted on her blog about a couple o...

Our art co-op this year has changed a little bit.  Last year one of the families in our art co-op had a daughter in pre-K who went to Kindergarten in the public school this year.  So, that family no longer is part of our art co-op.  But, my friend who we still do art with knew of a family that would be homeschooling again this year after last year's public school experience.  And, there are a a couple of wonderful things about this new arrangement: there are two boys in the new family (yay! Andrew and Adam are not the only boys!), and the mom is an artist (yay! No more craft days, and much more true art instruction)! Because one of the moms is an artist and feels comfortable teaching art all the time, we decided to change things up so we wouldn't be rotating the art instruction.  But, in order to make it a co-op, the other mom and I needed to help out in some way.  So, we decided to add a couple of subjects to our art co-op: cooking and music. ...