The Sinister Scribe

This is something I’ve been meaning to blog about! But first I had to make sure it was okie-dokie to do so.

Barb over at Harmony Fine Arts has chosen us to test drive her completely revamped art and music appreciation program for the Medieval and Renaissance time period. How cool is that?!? Okay, so maybe “chosen” isn’t the right word. I did volunteer. But she said yes. Woot! If you don’t know about Barb and her amazing website, please go there now!

First glance: well organized; everything is laid out by week. Detailed: suggested reading, listening and drawing activities are all right there and linked. Images for study are in the PDF too. Options: she gives you 3… each laid out with the same detail and organization.

I emailed with Barb… that’s yet another thing I love about this … Barb is very reachable by email! Anyway, the pictures she lists are examples to pare down the overwhelming amount of viewable art out there. So besides having 3 well organized, detailed options laid out for you, you also have the option of using them as suggestions to customize it. Yeah, I’m kinda excited about this.

Yesterday was our first session. I’d planned on doing the art section with Mark Kistler’s draw squad but things worked out differently and we ended up listening to  the Vivaldi part of the “Story of Vivaldi and Corelli” CD while the kids were having a snack. (yes, I’m stuffing their ears while they stuff their face. *giggle*) When it got to the tracks for “Autumn” and “Winter” we were all dancing around the kitchen trying to move like falling leaves, snowflakes, pretending to make snow angels on the floor (that was Sam), and doing things like patting out the beat in imitation of “Little Einsteins” that Jessie likes to listen to so much.

I’ve set up a table (cleared off more like) to set out things for art and music appreciation. Here you can see the table with the Vivaldi CD a print from Giotto, a book about him and one of the Met’s S.I.A. volumes. I’ll leave these out while we study Vivaldi and Giotto. I will also display our art projects as we do them. Maybe even have the art and music binder kept here.

I’d planned on printing out pictures of the focus artwork, artist picture and composer picture but we are on a printer ink diet this month so that isn’t happening. But I remembered something I picked up last year at one of the library book sales: “Seminars in Art” from the Met. (A large format, 17 volume set for $17 no less!) It didn’t have the artwork needed for this week, but it did have a couple of things from Giotto. It will have to do. One is a detail from the same artwork shown on the book cover. Of course there is the option of viewing the suggested image on the computer (which we will do). But I really wanted something not on the computer too.

One project I might add to the first 4 weeks list is a small fresco using a sketch we’ll be creating in the following weeks. Might be an interesting experience to try and convert a sketch to a fresco like Giotto may have done.

Wednesday we’ll probably read about Giotto (although Sam had it read as soon as it came in the house). And do the suggested drawing activities. As well as closing up the second quarter’s projects, tests and adding to our year book.

Whew! Lots to do. I’d better get going