Boy-Friendly Valentine Art

My guys like doing all kinds of art and craft projects to go along with the current season or holiday.  Valentine's day, though, has always been challenging, what with all the hearts and pink and stuff.  This seems to be the case more so in recent years.  I don't know... maybe adding a sister to the mix has them drawing gender lines? 

At any rate, I loved how today's project celebrates the season of hearts and love without being frilly, and so did my boys!

First we cut and tore bits of colored tissue paper, ideally into roughly postage-stamp size pieces, but some people liked theirs bigger.

I added a few drops of water to our glue to thin it, and then we painted it onto plain white paper one section at a time, randomly sticking tissue bits down as we went.

When that was completely dry, we cut out as big a heart shape as we could.

Then sponge painted black around the edges.

And finished up with a few black splatters.  I thinned the paint with several drops of water for this step.

Our finished hearts:

I can just imagine how striking these would be in shades of pink and purple.  With maybe a little glitter sprinkled in? Mmm-mm!  Maybe in a year or two!

(Our hearts were inspired by this project)

Country Studies - Spain

Our week in Spain focused mainly on art and the Spanish language.

We... 

- began by locating Spain on our giant atlas, discussing its capital, its neighbor Portugal, what a peninsula is, and major land forms on the Iberian peninsula.  

 - read a brief history and other information from our Encyclopedia of World Geography.



 - printed an outline map of Europe and colored the UK and Spain.  We will add to this map each week as long as we are in Europe.
Outline Map of Europe:
http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/pdf/eur_countrynl.pdf

 - learned what it is like to be a kid in Spain today.  Time for Kids has a fun feature of a "Day in the Life" of kids from different countries. 
Day in the life:
http://www.timeforkids.com/destination/spain/day-in-life

 - touched very briefly on the composers of Spain and listened to a small sampling from Isaac Albeniz on youtube.
Composers of Spain
http://www.classicsforkids.com/composers/composers_geo.asp?country=Spain

Our biggest projects from Spain were inspired by Picasso.  First up were Picasso faces as detailed at Art Lessons for Kids.

Picasso faces:
http://artlessonsforkids.me/2011/12/09/picasso-inspired-faces-in-grade-3/

For our more involved Picasso creation we had a guest teacher!

 Mimi came and walked the boys through each step, from tearing and gluing the paper for texture....

 ...to tracing the template, sectioning off the paper, and painting in each section.

I loved being able to just sit back and take pictures!  Aren't the finished products pretty?

Picasso Violin, from That Artist Woman:
http://www.thatartistwoman.org/2012/07/in-style-of-picasso-guitar-collage.html

Some of our library books for the week included:

Pablo Picasso (Art for Children)

I love the Art for Children series for its tame samples of artwork (no noodies!) and its leaving out biographical info about less-than-honorable life choices (no mention of dying from s.t. diseases!).

Some selections fun for exposure to foreign language vocabulary:
See and Say: A Picture Book in Four Languages

And:

ABC's in English and Spanish

And:
The story of The Little Red Hen, told in both English and Spanish.  This was an older book (that I can't find on Amazon, but many similar books are available.  The repetition of this story lent itself well to recognizing some of the Spanish words as we read through.

Dale enjoyed the Newberry winner Shadow of a Bull, set in Spain, and (surprise) about bullfighting.

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