Art for a Year

Yes, Art for Year. Its not as daunting as you would imagine.  A 36 week school year if you do a craft a week is 36 crafts.  36 crafts really isn't all that unrealistic in getting done ahead of time.   Even if you do all the prep work such as cutting out small pieces or finding odd and end supplies.  Mine isn't quite 36 weeks, because we start school on a Monday and Monday is our art day so we won't do art the first day.  We don't do any the week of Thanksgiving either because its a busy week, etc.

I first went through our school calendar and figured out which days corresponded to holidays or other days of note.  Such as Columbus Day or Arbor Day. Finding crafts to correspond to specific days is rather easy.  If you are doing unit studies you can find crafts that go along with those.  Anything patriotic could be used for Memorial Day or Veterans Day, Presidents Day, etc.  Some art lessons can be used to make useful things around the house.  You could give them a task of using the recycling to create organized desks or lockers for Earth Day.  Make your own decorations for a holiday or a party instead of buying.  Remember to keep some art for a portfolio if you have older children who will be applying to colleges soon.

I filled in the rest of the days with Art related to a specific artist or art style.  I ended up realizing I wanted to do way more than one craft a week.  But my file box only held enough for a craft a week.  So I put some in my filing cabinet under 'extras'.  That way if we have more time or someone gets bored, viola a craft is instantly available.

For older kids you can add in more elements.  The city collage one for instance, ask them to do only half a page and paint the other half as a reflection.  For projects too involved for younger kids simplify it for them by cutting out all the pieces, having the picture already drawn or like in the post it note craft, draw an outline of a simple picture on graph paper, something they recognize and ask them to color in the squares.  

Here is how I organized mine. All set and ready to go. 

Heres my list for the year: (remember to click on the links for pictures and directions)

 

09/16/13	Marc Chagall
09/23/13	Octagon Geo Shape
09/30/13	Expand an Image
10/07/13	Circle art
10/14/13	Origami Boat
10/21/13	Oh My Gosh its Bosch
10/28/13	Name Skeletons
11/04/13	William Wegman Craft
11/11/13	Patriotic Wind Sock
11/25/13	Mayflower recycled craft
12/02/13	Snowman Reflection
12/09/13	Thumb Print Christmas lights
12/16/13	Print and Color Nativity scene
01/06/13	Picassos Guitar
01/13/14	Nature Scene
01/20/14	Torn Paper Landscapes
01/27/14	Flowing by Helen Frankenthaler
02/03/14	Senecio-Head of Man by Paul Klee
02/10/14	Valentines Day Craft – Magazine hearts on coffee stirrers
02/17/14	Presidents Day Craft
02/24/14	Beasts of the Sea Matisse
03/03/14	Spring Craft Flower basket
03/10/14	St. Patricks Day Crafts
03/18/14	Apples and Oranges Cezzane
03/24/14	Christina's World by Wyeth
03/31/14	City Collage
04/07/14	Coral Reef
04/28/14	Newspaper Tree
05/05/14	Post it Note Art/ Graph Paper Art
05/12/14	Murano Glassware Shelf
05/19/14	Art Dice
05/26/14	Memorial Day Craft – Patriotic Chinese Lanterns
06/02/14	Fathers Day Hand Print Tree

Making a Gardening Notebook

Since we moved into our new home my daughter has started to garden.  I wanted to make her a nice notebook to help her plan and keep track of all the hard work she has done.  If you wanted to make one for your kids here is what I did. 

I found a great printable gardening notebook for her at About.   But I didn't like the cover, and it wasn't personalized.  So I found this Pretty Trellis I could print out and write her name in.  You don't have to print out every page for the notebook and some of them you might want multiple pages for, like the plant profile page and the journaling page. 

For younger children you can add some pages about the seed to plant process, or coloring pages for each type of plant that you are planting.  

A few tips: Make sure your printer is set to auto landscape/portrait because the pages flip back and forth between the 2.  If you choose a different page for the cover like I did make sure you don't get the website and date time stamps on the top and bottom of the page.  If you chose to print black and white make sure your printer is set to grey scale or it will come out as a pink color instead.  Make copies of the originals and keep the originals so you can do it again the next planting season.