November Painting.........The Bare Tree

So, this week I gave in.
Toucie has spent the last two years painting with a single primary color at a time, and just these last 3 months painting with 2 colors at once. She's been thrilled to watch orange, or green, or violet appear under her brush during these painting sessions and now has begun begging to find out what happens when you mix all three - red, yellow, and blue.
Some might say this is too much to tackle with a kindergartener, but I am giving this one to the kid...she wants to explore with color? Here's a brush, girl!

Since I know that the 3 primary colors blend to make a muddy brown, I tried to come up with a painting where that would work to our advantage. Here, in our corner of the world, November means that the final dance of the turning leaves is taking place. Most of the trees have already "put on their party clothes" and now dropped them and are standing bare on thick carpets of colored leaves.

I chose a short story called "The Anxious Leaf" and adapted it to our needs, changing words and phrases here and there. When the story was told we began the painting...I painted silently and Toucie followed my actions.

Here are the basic steps we did:

- Paint about a third of the paper blue, a third yellow, and a third red...you can see in Toucie's painting above how we roughly placed the thirds....try not to let the colors touch at first. Make sure brushes are rinsed between colors. Use generous brushfulls of paint (so that the painting is wet enough that you'll be able to drag one color into another for making the secondary colors)
-With a clean brush, sweep very gently back and forth between the blue and the yellow to create an area of green at the bottom of the paper (grass maybe?)
-Again, clean the brush and sweep back and forth between blue and red at the top to create an area of violet.
-Again, between red and yellow, to create an area of orange. (perhaps a sunset sky of yellow orange red violet blue?)
-You should have a rainbow of 6 colors on your paper.
-With a clean brush, begin to sweep the brush through the colors, creating the shape of tree roots, trunk and bare branches. Try not to lift your brush from the paper so that all the colors are pulled along by your brush and blended to make brown. Sweep up and down, from root, through the trunk, up to a branch, back down the branch, down through the trunk, down to create another root. Up again, thickening the trunk, brushing out to create another branch, etc...a beautiful brown tree will appear as if by magic, standing against a sky of many shifting colors.

November Painting.....The Storm

THE STORM

In my bed all safe and warm
I like to listen to the storm.
The thunder rumbles loud and grand -
The rain goes splash and whisper; and
The lightening is so sharp and bright
It sticks its fingers through the night.
                                      -Dorothy Aldis

(paint freely with blue)

October Watercolor....Pumpkin Painting

This idea came from Our Little Nature Nest. Mado joined Toucie and I for painting time and it was great...she is an expert at wet-on-wet watercolors! I adapted the story to suit our own style, so here it is with the changes (and a tip of the hat to Kytka from whose site the story came originally):

The golden moon shone bright in the indigo sky.

(paint a large yellow circle in the center of the paper. Rinse brush and begin painting blue around the edges of the paper for the sky)

The sky pressed in from all sides but the glowing moon said, “You must leave me some room to breathe”, so the blue sky surrounded her gently, but did not touch her.

(try to paint the sky in rich blue without touching the yellow so as not to create any green!)

The autumn night was chill and the moon felt very cold. Nearby, the Red Star saw her shivering and said, “I will warm you, Moon!”.  The red starlight washed over the moon and she felt a glow of warmth all over.

(rinse and dry brush, dip into the red paint , and paint over the yellow circle, creating an orange circle. Rinse and dry brush.)

“Oh!” said the moon, “It is very cozy to be clothed in starshine, but I cannot see out! Please open some spaces so that I may peek out.” And so, the sky opened up a little hole for one eye to peek out, and then another, (etc, for the nose and mouth).

(with a clean brush that you’ve dried on your paper towel, begin to lift off paint, rinsing and drying the brush again after each “erasing” stroke you make on the painting. Create a jack-o-lantern face out of the “holes” you open)

Anyone down on the earth below who was looking up at the moon that night was quite delighted and surprised to see a _______ shining down on them!

(My 5 yr. old child was quite amazed to see a pumpkin face emerge from her moon painting . I paused in saying the sentence above to let her fill in the blank with “jack-o-lantern!” as if she had worked magic right there on the paper! Which, of course, she had.)

Toucie's pumpkin

Mado's pumpkin

Michaelmas watercolor....Dragon painting!

The sun rises high (paint a rich yellow sun. rinse brush)
In an indigo sky. (paint a rich blue sky. rinse brush)
A sunbeam streaks by (dip brush in yellow and drag through the blue sky into the yellow sun)
So a dragon can fly! (refine your streak into a dragon shape...the green will appear as you stroke the brush from the blue sky into the yellow sun and back)

Early Autumn Watercolor....Autumn Fires

AUTUMN FIRES

In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!

Robert Louis Stevenson

(using yellow and red, paint freely as inspired by the poem)
 

First week of school!

We'll be spending a couple of weeks celebrating Early Autumn in our homeschool. Our "circletime" is really just a time for singing, movement and observing the seasons/festivals of the year as they roll by.
 
Here are the rhymes and songs from our Early Autumn Circle (the bits in italic parenthesis are notes to myself about movement or how to link one song/verse to the next) :

(standing and with wide, expansive hand gestures:)

Good morning, dear Earth! Good morning, dear Sun!

Good morning, dear stones, and flowers, every one!

Good morning to the bees, and the birds in the trees!

Good morning to you, and good morning to me!

 -from our parent/tot group

(counting on fingers :)

1,2,3, nous avons un grand chat.

4,5,6, il a des longues griffes!

7,8,9, il a mange un oeuf !

10,11,12 il est jaune et rouge.

-adapted from "Receuil de poemes..."

(let's take a walk among the trees of the forest...)

(walking quietly around circle on tip-toe: )

Quietly I step step step

In the woods so dark

Carefully I tip tip tip

Making not a mark.

My feet are silent like a cat

They do not make a sound

The birds they do not hear me pass

I hardly touch the ground.

-from Marsha Johnson

(some leaves are beginning to turn colors)

(pass a beanbag around front and back of body/ balance beanbag on head/ let drop into hands: )

Front and back, front and back

Around me the leaves do swirl

Up on top, up on top

From the sky a leaf does drop!

-adapted from Marsha Johnson

(some old apple trees are growing here)

(skipping around circle/ repeat skipping opposite direction: )

Come along my dear one, come along with me

Come into the orchard and shake the apple tree

I will pick the high ones, you will pick the low

When we’ve filled our baskets, home with them we’ll go.

-adapted from "Sing Through the Year"

(repeat several times, catch beanbags/ toss into basket to the rhythm of:)

Reddish-yellow-golden-green,

Prettiest apples ever seen!

Pick them high and pick them low

Wonder how many in will go!

1,2,3…

Pommes rouges sur le pommier,

Moi je viens avec mon panier.

Pommes, sur le gazon tombez!

Moi je veux bien vous manger!

-adapted from  "Receuil de poemes..."

(now we have so many apples…look, a squirrel!)

(sing: )

Squirrel Nutkin with his coat of brown,

Quite the loveliest in Woodland Town.

Two bright eyes look 'round to see

Where the sweetest of the nuts might be.

 -from parent/tot circle

(strew nuts and return them to basket using toes while repeating )

Grey squirrel, grey squirrel, swish your bushy tail

“             “         “        “             “      “       “         “

Wrinkle up your little nose

Pick a nut up with your toes

Grey squirrel, grey squirrel, swish your bushy tail!

-from Wynstones Autumn book

(now we have basketfuls of apples and nuts...time to return home for a story)

(walking quietly around circle on tip-toe: ) 

Quietly I step step step

In the woods so dark

Carefully I tip tip tip

Making not a mark.

My feet are silent like a cat

They do not make a sound

The birds they do not hear me pass

I hardly touch the ground.

-from Marsha Johnson

(sit)

(Ah, we’re home…let child settle, light candle and sing song for storytime)

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Baking for this week was a scrumptious banana bread using this recipe (but substituting coconut oil for the canola).

Handwork was making a few more beanbags to use in our circle verses above. We needed 16 in order to play the game of tossing "apples" into a basket to the rhythm of  the "Reddish-yellow-golden-green" poem (we tossed a beanbag on every other beat in the poem...so, 4 tosses for each line : REDdish YELlow GOLden GREEN, etc). I stitched up the bags and Toucie had the challenging job of filling them. We normally use sand or rice in our beanbags, but this time we had dry chickpeas on hand, so....

 

For Painting Day we used a poem to inspire a wet-on-wet watercolor using only the color red. You can see our work in progress at the top of this page :)