homeschool co-op ideas | Butterscotch Sundae

I first became aware of artist Wayne Thiebaud a little more than a decade ago, when Rockford’s sister worked at The Phillips Collection. They only have one of his paintings in their regular collection, so they must have had a special exhibit or something. Or I could be entirely misremembering where I first saw his work.

Thiebaud is my favorite artist either way, so I knew when I saw that MaryAnn Kohl’s “Great American Artists for Kids” included a project based on his work that we’d be doing it in our art class at co-op.

Although he’s made paintings with lots of other subjects, Thiebaud is best known for his paintings of cakes, pies and other desserts. “CBS Sunday Morning” aired a nice piece on him back in 2002; he seems like a nice, self-effacing kind of guy:

The “Great American Artists” Thiebaud project focuses on his dessert paintings, so I took a couple of baking cookbooks with me to co-op yesterday for the girls to flip through before they got started on their watercolors. The book suggests adding flavor extracts to the painting water to provide a little extra sensory inspiration, so I took in what I had on hand: almond, lemon, peppermint and butter.[ref]“Didn’t you have vanilla?” my co-teacher asked. Yes, but I forgot about it because it isn’t stored with the other extracts. It’s in the giant vanilla jug.[/ref] Not only was our classroom the most pleasant-smelling in the building, but the girls really enjoyed painting with the scented water.

After they finished sketching and then painting their cupcakes, the girls spread white glue over the frosting areas of their paintings and poured real baking sprinkles over it. That was definitely their favorite part of the project, and it really made their paintings pop with color and texture.

This would’ve been an awesome project even if I weren’t so fond of Wayne Thiebaud!

We’ve been attending our homeschool co-op since 2011, and I’ve taught or assisted in a class during every session since. Like so:

Fall 2011: Co-taught Outdoor Games and assisted in the History of Video Games.

Spring 2012: Taught “Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Other Things That Go.”

Fall 2012: Assisted in “Story of the World” history and Clay Exploration.

Spring 2013: Taught “Superheroes 101.”

Fall 2013: Co-taught a baking class.

Which is as it should be, considering that it’s a “cooperative” learning environment. Five of those previous classes were rambunctious, though, and at the end of the last session I was ready for a break. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to teach anything in the spring session.

Then the time to enter classes into the system arrived, and there weren’t enough classes to go around. So I tried to think of something that would be the very easy-peasiest thing for me to do. That’s when I remembered that MaryAnn Kohl’s “Great American Artists for Kids” was sitting on my bookshelf. And that’s how we added this to my homeschool co-op curriculum vitae:

Spring 2014: Teaching “Great American Artists.”

John Singleton Copley's "Watson and the Shark" — John Singleton Copley’s “Watson and the Shark”

Yesterday was the second co-op day for the spring, and I can say without a doubt that this has been my least stressful co-op experience so far. There are four 9- to 12-year-old girls in my class, and using Kohl’s book means all I have to do is gather the supplies and hand them over because the research part is already done.

I was very impressed with the kids’ work this week, and I thought you might like to see it. In fact, I’ll be sharing the results of our art class with you over the next 8 or so weeks. Let’s go!

John Singleton Copley & narrative drama.

Last week we started talking about John Singleton Copley. Copley was a well-regarded portraitist in his day, but the painting we focused on is what Kohl calls a “narrative drama,” or a picture that tells a story. “Watson and the Shark” is based on a shark attack that took place in 1749 in Havana. Fourteen-year-old Brook Watson was swimming in the harbor when the shark attacked him. It took three attempts to rescue him, and he lost a leg in the attack. He went on to become the mayor of London. Way to bounce back, Watson!

Anyway, we watched a National Gallery of Art video about “Watson and the Shark” and then did some brainstorming to think of thrilling tales that the kids could illustrate. They declined to use the ideas my fellow teacher and I offered up — bear attacks! volcanic eruptions! a bear fighting a volcano! — instead choosing to use a favorite book or their own imaginations for inspiration. They spent the rest of last week’s class sketching their exciting scenes, and yesterday they finished their sketches and added color using oil pastel crayons.