"People are naturally divided into those who read and think and those who do not read or think; and the business of schools is to see that all their scholars shall belong to the former class; it is worth while to remember that thinking is inseparable from reading which is concerned with the content of a passage and not merely with the printed matter." Charlotte Mason, Volume 6, page 31
The Commonplace Book has come up over the last week in questions from my blog readers. This is a fairly simple idea that I think facilitates exactly what Charlotte Mason was alluding to in the passage above. Reading and then *thinking* about what you have read is very important to making relationships with the written material.
The words on the page become more alive and when our children narrate back either in speech or in writing, taking their reading to a higher level. We are not asking them to answer a preset list of questions but rather to have them read, think, digest, and then tell back in some way what they learned. Copying quotes from their reading also makes them more intimate with the ideas of the author.
The Commonplace Books that we keep in our family are written by hand into spiral notebooks. They have been put on lined paper and inserted in binders and also written in composition books at various times as well. I generally let my boys choose at the beginning of the year how they want to keep their Commonplace Books. We do not strictly adhere to writing quotes from the books. Mr. B likes to record quotes more than Mr. A. They mix the idea of a Commonplace Book with a journal and have their own unique version of their reading and thinking all mixed together.
A few specifics:
They copy quotes from the book.
They can write a short summary of what they read.
They can record their reflections or responses to their reading.
Sometimes they make a sketch or drawing instead of writing words.
The length of the entry varies greatly depending on the subject and the length of the day's reading.
I do not "grade" the Commonplace Books, but I do read them weekly.
I do not correct their Books for spelling, grammar, or punctuation.
They know at the beginning of each week which books they need to write about in their Commonplace Books.
Lately I have been requiring a Commonplace Book entry for their free reading books. I find it is the best way to keep up with which books they are currently reading *and* to see that they are actually completing some free reading each week.
They are required once a week to make a Commonplace Book entry for their assigned Bible reading.
We started keeping Commonplace Books years ago in middle school. I sort of wish now they were in nice fancy bound books so I could line them up on the shelf for them to have at their fingertips. As it is, they are all scattered about in various binders and notebooks. We still enjoy pulling them out and reviewing them from time to time. I keep my own Commonplace Book but only for my Bible reading....it is a treasure.
Now when I talk about Commonplace Books, you will know what those are and how we use them in our family.
Some weeks test my endurance. The kind of endurance that you need to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to keep the light at the end of the tunnel in sight. Endurance is a good quality to develop so I can view week's like this as a training session for moms.
As far as the tests go, my main problem is that I have developed two very able thinkers who want to dig deeper into things than I am prepared for on your average homeschool day. Issues that come up in our geography, literature, Bible reading, science, current events, and more have them expressing concerns and ideas that leave me speechless. Speechless in a good way, but still I am taking deep breaths a lot and finding myself saying more and more, "We will need to do some more research to answer that question." Gone are the days when we are just learning facts and putting them neatly into little boxes. Now I see their brains reasoning, contemplating, and debating about issues surrounding the facts. This is what we have been working for all these years. Our best days are when we sit around at the table and talk about what they are learning. It gives me food for thought as well. It fuels more research and now they are putting that research into words in their writing.
It is exhausting.
So now to my Weekly Wrap-Up which will be just a series of photos with the highlights as usual. I was thinking that the photos really don't show much of what I am trying to explain above. It really is a case of "you really need to be here" to completely understand.
We are into our second week with Saxon Geometry and I am pleasantly surprised at how much my son and I like it so far. I will keep you posted about how it goes since I have heard of no one yet who is using it in high school. (It is a new product for Saxon.)
World Geography this week was still about African countries and we focused on Cameroon and Tanzania. I know I have said this many times before, but for our family the notebooking pages for each country have really pulled our study together. We adapted them a bit to fit our focus of modern culture by eliminating the "history" section on the second notebook page and substituting in "current event" instead. We all are enjoying learning more about what is happening in each country as of today.
I just can't keep my boys away from maps and they complete these all on their own as we work through Trail Guide to World Geography. I leave them as options, but I notice that the map is one of the first assignments they complete each week.
Another little blurb on GeoPuzzles: My boys pulled the African GeoPuzzle out the other day and they could put it together in about 3 minutes.....a vast improvement over when we first started using the puzzles. I also quizzed Mr. A by turning a few of the pieces over and he could tell by the shape what country the pieces were. He is so visual-spatial and the GeoPuzzles really work with this sort of learner. I am amazed.
I had a few emails this week about Commonplace Books. My boys use them every week for their reading assignments. Mr. B is keeping a Commonplace Book for his reading of the John Muir book, The Yosemite. Mostly he writes down quotes he likes and I enjoy reading over the book at the end of each week. Very insightful.
Mr. A is working hard in his aviation class. I am pleasantly surprised at the notes he is taking as he reads. He has formed a study group with two other adult students on Wednesday afternoons. This is a child that has been homeschooled all the way through and my extended family has been on my back about his lack of opportunity for "socialization". The success I have seen in his ability to attend and flourish in an adult class as a 16 year old, shows me his socialization skills are just fine...I knew it all along. He has not been schooled in a bubble.
Here is another photo of the Crazy Lawnmower robot that each of the boys built over the last few weeks. They are now going to work through a new book called, One-Kit Wonders. One of the projects is a robot that will sort peanut M&Ms by color using the sensor. They are really anxious to get started on that one.
Auto shop class this week with Dad using Auto Upkeep is to change the air filter on a car. I am reaping the benefits of this course and I love it!
This is actually from last week, but I don't think I shared any images of their artist notebook pages.
They are now in their next six week study. Mr. A: Albert Bierstadt for artist study and Brahms for his composer. Mr. B: Caspar David Friedrich for his artist and Maurice Ravel for his composer.
To wrap up this Weekly Wrap-Up: I endured to Friday. I have all their work recorded in Homeschool Tracker. They want to go for a bike ride....in the rain???? I want to go to Starbucks. My hubby has been away for training this week, but he will be home this evening. Fire season is coming upon us quickly.
Last week's assignment was to sketch someone wearing a hat or the hat by itself. Thank you to all the participants for your hard work this week. Hope you enjoy your slideshow!
This week's assignment, due Monday, March 1, 2010: Sketch something red.
Everyone is welcome to sketch, including moms and dads. You are encouraged to use color this week perhaps with colored pencils or watercolor pencils. Please send your sketches in by Monday, March 1st for the slideshow. Send sketches to: sketchtuesday@yahoo.com.
Well, this is another of my two week Wrap-Up posts. I have been very distracted with our spring-like weather. Our whole family has been outdoors quite a bit this week and away from all technology, sort of like we are emerging from a cocoon.
Mr. A's artist for the last six weeks has been Caspar David Friedrich. He wanted to make a reproduction of this painting:
He started off with some watercolors and then finished it with some acrylics because he thought the watercolors just weren't vibrant enough to do justice to the painting.
Mr. B received his new computer program for his afternoon project time. Now we shall see how he flies with this new creative outlet. HT to Kristen.
We had a Groundnut Stew as part of our African studies and this week we are going to try some Sweet Potato Fritters. The stew was delicious and even though it seemed odd to put peanut butter into the pot, it was a hit with all of us. Loving this cookbook: Eat Your Way Around the World.
The boys are working a few robotics projects from THIS website. They made a very cool lawn mower and the blade actually goes around underneath. This was a fun project for them and easy to build.
We are into our second week of reading Shakespeare's Macbeth. The boys really didn't like it to start with, but now they are starting to get into this bloody plot. This the first real tragedy play that we have read since hitting high school....interesting to hear their comments on Lady Macbeth.
We have gone on several really long hikes this week since the weather has been nice. The boys also got in one day of snowboarding which almost turned into a disaster. Mr. B had a fall...a really big fall, directly onto his face which smashed his goggles into his nose and cheek. He bit his lips with his braces and that caused a lot of blood. The ski patrol just happened to be right there and they made sure he was just scratched up before they let him go. This is why moms worry. :)
Everything else has been pretty routine: Math, science, auto shop (brakes this week), writing (finishing up an essay where they practiced using multiple sources and a bibliography), and geography of South Africa, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria. Poetry memorization is chugging along as well as Spanish and trumpet/violin playing.
Just as a note: I found this gadget linked on someone's blog not too long ago:
It is my new best friend. I can make the best hot cocoa with lots of foam on top thanks to this little tool. I also have made a few really good homemade mochas using coffee and cocoa along with this gadget. I highly recommend it!
I posted my latest review on Curriculum Choice this morning and it is one that took a really long time to write. There is just so much to say about the Teaching Writing: Structure and Style program!
My daughter Amanda has her latest handicraft, art, and nature study kit available as of today! You are going to love all the great projects and activities she has pulled together for this latest kit.
Last week's assignment was to sketch something can recycle. We recycle many things at our house so we had some good choices of subjects. Here in California in our town they make it easy to recycle just about anything. Thank you to all this week's participants for sharing your recycling sketches.
This week's assignment: Sketch someone wearing a hat or just the hat.
Please send in your sketches by Monday, February 22, 2010 and I will include them in Tuesday's slideshow. All sketches should be sent to: sketchtuesday@yahoo.com. Please limit yourselves to one sketch per person per week. Everyone is welcome to sketch of all ages...that means moms and dads too!
Question from reader: What about when you need to set up grades for a transcript? There, say for history in 9th grade, the student writes several essays on the topics, makes a timeline project, gives a speech on a book he's read. That is the output you have for a history class that they (independently?) are learning from. But, for college, they need a letter grade. What criteria have you come up with to evaluate their output and give them a grade?
I've read several articles and threads (at Sonlight) about this and many people set up their own criteria for assigning grades. How do you do this when there aren't percentages from tests taken?
It seems that we have to/are trying to fit together two different systems (CM) and the traditional system to when we have to give grades. But that is the reality of it, and I wonder how you have decided on what to grade with subjects that are more relative.
My reply: I don't think I have talked about grades on my blog before. Just for the record, I hate grades.
We have weekly work that is assigned and I give them a grading rubric. I use rubrics for writing, history, literature, robotics, art skills, and geography. The rubric will show the assignments and then how many points are assigned to each activity. (See the end of this post for links on what a rubric is and how to make one.)
For many of the Charlotte Mason sorts of activities that I blend into their other subjects, the assignments are part of the grading rubrics for that particular subject. For instance, their nature journals are part of their science assignments each week. Their Shakespeare and poetry assignments are included on their literature rubrics. Their artist and composer study assignments are part of their fine arts rubric. I think you get the idea.
Another example might be history. The rubric covers things like maps, notebook pages, commonplace book, timelines, biographies to read, speeches read, etc. I assign them their weekly work and then on Fridays we meet together in the morning and go over that week's work. I use Homeschool Tracker so I just plug in their scores each Friday from their weekly work and then at the end of the term it generates a grade for me after I plug in their Term Exam results.
For subjects like science, spanish, auto shop, and math where we are using the chapter tests during the term as part of their grade that is easy to score and record. Then when I assign an exam question at the end of the term, it is only part of the grade. There again, the boys know in advance what is expected and it is more of a pass/fail situation.
Grades don't mean that much to my boys. They like the written evaluations I give them with personal comments on their Term Exams. I take a few minutes and write out where I saw improvement during the term and what I think they can work on for the next term. It is very informal and I try to find something positive to say to encourage them in their schoolwork.
I also keep track on Homeschool Tracker of any additional activities for their transcripts. I record things like volunteer work, projects they complete like RC airplanes and special Lego projects, extra PE items like snowboarding and snorkeling, and field trips we have taken. These are the things that make our transcripts unique and special.
Our goals may be different than yours for your children. We are not looking for our children to go to upper end universities or colleges. My older two have used the local community college for their first two years and then moved on from there. It was a great choice for our family since it allowed them to live at home and still stay under our watchful eye. They were both happy with their experiences at college. I am assuming my younger two will do the same route. This means we don't worry too much about grades and transcripts. All of them will take the SAT as a way to document just where they are overall in comparison to other public school children.
Hope that helps. I know on the HEO (House of Education Online) Yahoo Group there is a file that has some sample transcripts from AO kids. I found them to be quite interesting. You might take a look.
My grading rubrics are sometimes very simple but they give my boys a clear and defined assignment. I found out a long time ago that they like things spelled out ahead of time and that way there are no surprises. This takes a little effort up front from me but it is worth it at grading time. I recycle rubrics from week to week as well so once the system is set up I can print out a previous rubric and have them fill in the current assignment at the top.
I highly recommend using Homeschool Tracker or something similar to make keeping track of grades and activities easier over the four years of high school.
Last week the assignment was to sketch a train or part of a train. Hold onto your hats because there are some terrific sketches this week! Don't miss the slideshow...it is really long this week so make sure you have a few minutes to enjoy all the artwork!
This week's assignment is due Monday, February 15th: Sketch something you can recycle.
Please make your sketches and send them in to: sketchtuesday@yahoo.com. Everyone of all ages is welcome to sketch...even moms and dads. Remember to send in your sketches by Monday, February 15th to be included in Tuesday's slideshow.
I just received an email letting me know that at Homeschool Freebie of the Day they are offering a complete Impressionist Study lapbook, notebook pages, and wall chart link.
I have one son that is definitely having a gap year for many of the reasons she states in her entry. If you have an early schooler or one that is zooming through their curricula, you MUST read these entries. She is going to write two more in the series and I can hardly wait.
I hope you will take few minutes and hop over and read these important thoughts.
Question from my Weekly Wrap-Up post: I enjoyed reading about your week. You mentioned you discussed Uncle Tom's Cabin with your boys this week. And, I'm wondering, how could I discuss that intelligently??? So, I'm wondering, how have you educated yourself to get your boys to this point. Is it mainly by using TOG? Or have you spent a lot of time reading the classics? If you already have a post about this, I'd love it if you'd point me to it. I'm just wondering how I'll be prepared to discuss some of these deeper topics. Thanks!
_____________________________________________________________________ My Response:
School for Us,
A little of everything is my best answer. 1. I have read quite a few of the books...a long time ago but the structure and main points are still in my mind. 2. Some books I don't remember at all so I read a bit of the book, skim some of the book, and read the Cliffs Notes. 3. If it is a TOG selection, the teacher's notes are thorough and well written and I can usually have my boys give me their thoughts in a discussion using some of the leading questions in the student activities. Here is a better explanation of how the notes do that on TOG: http://www.tapestryofgrace.com/explore/tns.php 4. If I have never read the book and I have time to read it, I enjoy following along with the boys. I did this with Les Miserables earlier this year using the Enriched Classic edition.
Overall, it really depends on the material. Last year when we did Medieval and Renaissance (TOG Yr 2), I really felt I needed to pretty much read everything they did and go through the teacher's notes. It was a tough year.
This year has been a bit easier and as the boys mature, they really take the discussions on for themselves. I just lead through questions. It isn't like I am quizzing them or needing to find specific answers either. They narrate to me what they thought and what they learned. I listen and respond as best I can. Since there are two of them, they sort of self correct...or agree to disagree.
We are getting ready to read Macbeth this week. I have read the introduction and notes to the play, refreshed my memory with the characters and plot, and found an audio book to listen to. We will listen together and talk as things come up. This is not a TOG selection so I will not have any notes.
I have outlined some narration prompts already using the notes from the book. Describe Banquo's murder. Why do you think Shakespeare's appeal has lasted so long? Write a review of this play for a local homeschooling group.
These are just our quick literature response narrations. I expect them to thoroughly answer the prompt in about a page usually. They never seem to have trouble with this exercise.
Remember that when the kids get into high school they have entered into a whole different world of thinking. They are no longer gathering facts or putting them together with connections, they are asking the "why" questions and are ready for thinking on a higher level. I see it happening in my boys. They go farther and build on things they have learned in the past.
For example: In Uncle Tom's Cabin, you are no longer learning about Lincoln or the basics of the Civil War, you are digging into the "whys" and the "why nots" behind the people. This book puts faces on slaves and slave owners. It shows how people can change in their most basic beliefs as Christians. You see the struggle in some of the slave owners over the conflict of being a Christian and treating fellow humans as chattel. My boys are finally old enough to grapple with these tough subjects. It did not take much prompting from me to hear how they really felt about things in this book. They both feel it is an important book. In fact, that was one of my narration prompts: Why should people read this book? They had solid answers. I didn't have to do anything but schedule the reading and then ask them the question.
We can all do this. There is no reason to shy away from high school because we feel inadequate. There are plenty of resources.
We used Teaching Company DVDs when we went through ancient history and literature. This was an area that the boys were interested in and I felt better having the DVD course for the Iliad and the Odyssey. (We love Elizabeth Vandiver.)We also viewed quite a few of the lectures in the Books that Have Made History course. Sidenote: If you are new to the Teaching Company, sign up for their catalog. You will be informed when their courses are at 50% off or better. Every course is marked to 50% off at some point in every year. You just have to pay attention. I have never purchased a course at full price.
Susan Wise Bauer suggests using Pink Monkey as a resource too for high school literature. I prefer to use Cliffs Notes or the Enriched Classics editions of books to help me with my preparation for discussions with the boys when I do not have TOG notes.
Highlights with photos from our week We finished reading, discussing, and writing about Uncle Tom's Cabin. The discussion this morning was very thought provoking. Earlier in the week, I had them write an essay sharing their insights about this book and today they surprised me with the depth of their thoughts. As a mom, it is hard for me to realize that these little people that live in my house can have such deep and compassionate thoughts on an issue that is out of their realm of experience. I guess that is what good literature is all about in our homeschooling plans.
I never realized before that this book has a subtitle....interesting.
We made injera or an Ethiopian flat bread. It is meant to be cooked in large pieces to serve as the serving platter for the meal. Traditionally, one piece of bread was used directly on the table and then broken off as you ate the meal. We opted to use it like a tortilla with our stew. In Ethiopia, it is considered polite to only eat with your right hand. We found that hard to do, okay almost impossible.
We are highly recommending this book as much more than a recipe book!
Here is one of our notebook pages from this week. I want to let you know that even though this looks like a fill in the blanks sort of exercise, there is a lot of critical thinking that goes into the process. They independently research the information and dig up gems to share with each other on Fridays. I love the way they find current events for their notebook page because this often times leads them into directions far beyond the prompts given. They are learning so much more than what is specified on the page and they are eager to share.
We have been playing this board game this week. I think we all have realized how terrible our sense of geography is for the continent of Africa. This game is a valuable part of our geography study as far as getting the countries in our minds and general location.
We are winding up our current composers and artists in the next week. Here is a copy of the Renoir self-portrait that Mr. B did with markers. Shifty eyes.
Not sure exactly what prompted Mr. B to build 100 Lego people but he was determined to finish before our lunch today. Now what? Just a little silliness.
The weather was not conducive to going snowboarding this week, postponing until next week. The men finished my compost bin and also had a little welding practice down in the shop. It does not look like much but it is going to be glorious to have my very own spinning compost bin! This is just what my garden needs this year. Thanks guys!
Those were the highlights of our very wet, cloudy week.
My week: I was busy planning the rest of our year's writing assignments using IEW. Done! Yahoo! I am also still hard at work on my new art/nature study project. Here is a glimpse into what I am testing this week.
Question from a reader: I took Miss A to see a production of Twelfth Night tonight. Last semester, we went to a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream which was put on by a Christian homeschool group. This, too, was by a homeschool group - though not a Christian group.
After reading the story, where people are falling in love with people of the same sex because of disguises, etc, I felt uncomfortable with the story. I didn't really find it that funny. Then, this group had some not-so-modest outfits, sad some bad words, and made some rude gestures.
I'm wondering why, as Christians, we are trying to introduce Shakespeare to our children. They are definitely not Godly stories. I know the language is deep and we will always come across references to his plays, but I'm just wondering at what cost?
I thought she did a really good job at summing up overall why we introduce our children to lots of different things. When I read this article yesterday out loud to my husband, we actually had a long discussion about Shakespeare. Too funny that you wrote this morning asking me about his writing. :)
Anyway, we take very seriously the responsibility to limit the exposure our children have to unhealthy and potentially spiritually damaging influences. We decided that Shakespeare is something we wanted to expose our children to first as good literature and then as the basis for being culturally literate. So much is spoken of and compared to Shakespeare in even the most basic of college courses that we felt we would be doing a disservice to our children if they didn't have at least a working understanding of his plays or an exposure to what all the hoopla was about.
That said, we started off with very sanitized versions of the most popular plays like Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. That was "good enough" for a long time.
Then when I started digging deeper into Charlotte Mason's ideas, I decided to refresh my memory with a few of the deeper plays that I had read in high school. I could not read them easily. I found that I had to listen to the audio books in order to make sense of it. There is a certain way to read Shakespeare that I think makes you overall a better reader.
Now to your question. Should Christians read Shakespeare?
This is something you will need to decide for your family. I have come to the conclusion that even though the apparent themes may be un-Christian, the morals are there. The bad guys get it in the end....mostly. The good guys triumph....mostly. The twists and turns explain much of the conflict with values. Here is an article that Jimmie links to on her Shakespeare Squidoo Lens that I read and enjoyed when I was thinking about the things you are thinking about now: http://www.berith.org/hsres/shak/shak01.html
To your specific situation with the Twelfth Night production....I say it may be that they were not faithful to the original intent and acted it in such a way to play up the boy-boy/girl relationship. The written page does not portray this is a weird boy/boy relationship at all but just a mistaken identity. It is funny in the book and you are relieved at the end when all is revealed. It is not uncomfortable at all. In fact when we read this play earlier this year, my boys were fascinated by the fact that in Shakespeare's time that all actors were boys. So Viola would have been a male actor playing a girl who is now disguised as the man Cesario.
Finally, we are just now approaching some of the more deep and dark Shakespeare now that the boys are a little older. We are tackling Hamlet next week. After that we are going to work on Macbeth. Last year we did King Lear and it was actually very good. Bad guys=bad things, good guys=good things. We will probably pick one production to see sometime in the next year when we can find an appropriate theater version. So many versions of Shakespeare in our area are "modernized" and they do play up the themes of boy/boy and are extremely dark. We will not see those.....Othello comes to mind.
We read Romeo and Juliet last year. This one we had really good discussions about the ending. Suicide is a deep subject. We actually spent some time on this aspect of the play and then decided what the real theme of the play was....it wasn't dying for love or some romanticized ideal of love either. This play was much more than that.
I love that we can talk and debate these things now that they are a little older. They have a grasp better on their Christian beliefs and we have discussed more adult ideas in the light of Bible scriptures as they have come up in our literature reading including Shakespeare. Sure, we could have just brought up the topic and talked about it, but tying their reading with scriptures and beliefs has made it more interesting and personal. They can see consequences of the character's actions.
I have saved some of my favorite Shakespeare plays for them to do as 12th graders. My absolute favorite is Merchant of Venice and since it has a twist at the end, I did not ever want to give it away in a children's version. The end is just too good.
This is the sort of a play that you could take as putting Christianity in a bad light, but you have to remember the time period. There was great antisemitism at that time, especially in some countries. We are going to use this as a discussion point comparing "the church" and real Christian values as laid down by Jesus.
There are great talking points within the Shakespeare plays about many Christian themes. These are things that you might like to share eventually with your daughter. Just sitting and watching a play will not be good enough. You will want to explore and talk and dig in with her side by side.
This is the beauty of homeschooling. We can look at seemingly un-Christian literature, art, music, historical ideas, world religions, and science and make sure that our children are not sheltered from wrong thinking but rather we show them how to hold things up to the light of truth and make informed decisions. Of course we wait until they are ready to handle the discussions and for our family this is something we have chosen to do in high school as we prepare them to face the world with a Christian worldview. They are going to be exposed to things that prick their conscience and we need to help them see how to handle it. Literature is just one vehicle to prepare them to read, discern, scrutinize, and then make informed decisions which are many times not popular. Literature courses were the worst place for my daughter in college. They were always a hotbed of ideas and wrong thinking. She had to many times stand alone with her beliefs.
Back to my boys, I always thoroughly research the production when we are going to see a Shakespearean play in person. I adored seeing Romeo and Juliet as a ballet in San Francisco. The music and the costumes were over the top awesome.
I would not hesitate to suggest the musical ballet after reading the book....Prokofiev rocks! There are so many things to love about Shakespeare and some really good stories that have a good point to them that I think lumping them all as un-Christian or unwholesome would be sad.
Do your research and make informed decisions. I do that with any literature. I just spent a better part of two weeks previewing and going through all of TOG's Year 4 literature and found some we will not be reading. I despise The Great Gatsby and no light of truth can change a really bad story. We are skipping a few others as well for the same reasons. But, with that said, we will be reading Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and using it to discuss some issues and themes that may be touchy. I pick and choose how and when to expose ideas and situations to my boys carefully and with my eyes as open as they can be.
We have struggled and come to grips with how we handle Shakespeare in our house and in our family. My husband and I both agree that it has been a great experience. Even before your email we had talked about some of the issues you brought up. Hope this helps you a little to start thinking about how you will handle Shakespeare in your home.
Last week's assignment was a tough one to get started on for many of the families. I am proud of all the effort this week and I love ever single sketch!
I know this sort of art copywork assignment takes some practice and many families find that with a little practice it becomes a fun way to follow up a study of an artist. My boys know that I expect their artist notebooks to include a sketch of one of the paintings they study for each artist, but I must admit that one of them said this particular painting was a "girl painting". He eventually buckled down and did a great job on one of the lanterns. We later talked about how JSS used the darker background to really make the lanterns seem to be illuminated. I was very pleased how the conversation showed that he had actually studied and thought about the artist and his techniques. I think that is what a good artist study will provide....insight.
This week's assignment, due February 8th: Sketch a train or just the engine.
Please make your sketches and send them in to: sketchtuesday@yahoo.com by Monday, February 8th and I will include them in the slideshow on Tuesday morning. Sketchers of all ages are welcome and please feel free to participate in any assignments that catch your interest.
As a sidenote: I must say that I enjoyed this week's study of JSS. It gave me a chance to flip through some of his other paintings with my husband as we discussed his works. I think JSS's work is luscious. There is no other word for it. It is filled with life and texture and some of my favorite portraits are found in his works. My favorite all-time portrait: Lady Agnew. I love everything about this painting: her dress, her necklace, the colors, the chair fabric, the background, her eyes, the pose....sigh.
