Making Connections, Creating Opportunities

When AJ isn’t worried about being persecuted for doing extra homework, I think he really enjoys Latin. He seems particularly interested in the ways in which Latin intersect with real life. I’ve been going out of my way to point out Latin roots, not just in our Latin lessons but also when we’re reading out loud or even watching TV. AJ was reading one of his 90 gazillion books about space the other night and he got a look on his face that suggested a bulb had just burned on over his head. “Mom, does ‘astronaut’ mean ‘sailor to the stars’? Because it sounds like astra and nauta.” Exactly right, AJ. Suddenly language is seeming more meaningful to him, imbued with history and poetry.

At our parent-teacher conference last week, I mentioned to his teacher that I’m teaching him Latin at home and this week his spelling list was drawn from words related by common Latin and Greek roots. Coincidence? Maybe. AJ’s not the only kid that gets the challenge words. But they weren’t the words on the regular challenge list. I think she made the list because she knew we’d been working on it. Big points for the teacher in my book.

Yesterday, when we sat down to do Latin, I could tell AJ was tired and not so into it. I turned to the next story and he groaned. It was long. We started to translate, but he was getting frustrated with all the new vocabulary and with the fact that he kept forgetting some of the little words that come up all the time. I slammed the book shut. “Let’s try something different.”

We’ve been flying through the textbook and are nearly done with it already. He picks things up so fast that it’s easy to do, but with language, you need processing time. I think it’s time to slow down and try some new things.

I sat down at the kitchen counter and wrote out the words to the first verse of “Adeste Fidelis.”

“Do you recognize this, AJ?”

“Hmm. I think it looks kind of familiar.”

“I’ll sing it for you. Maybe it will sound familiar.”

So I sang the verse. He recognized it, but didn’t remember the words in English or in Latin. I turned him loose to translate it. He’d had almost all the vocabulary. I just had to coach him through the imperative verb forms. He wrote his translation out. Then I wrote out how we sing the carol in English and we talked about some of the things you need to do when translating poetry or song lyrics that are different than just a straight translation. He was fascinated.

And then we sang it together, first in English, then in Latin.

“Are we done?” he asked when we finished.

“Yup.”

“That was more fun than regular Latin. Can we do it again?”

Lucky for me there are plenty of Latin carols to draw on this month. And as soon as we dig out the Christmas decorations, we’ll work on my Latin copy of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. That’s going to blow his mind.

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Yesterday’s study session was at an interesting intersection between a couple of different trains of thought I’ve been pursuing this week. One is an email exchange I had with our school district’s curriculum director. I’d sent her a link to a project of the Society for American Music that seeks to help teachers to use music in teaching American History. They are running a training institute this summer and have already got a website up with helpful links and suggestions for specific ways to incorporate specific pieces into history curricula. The site will eventually have lesson plans as well. I’m really excited about this project, as was the curriculum director. At a juncture where many schools are axing their music programs, this kind of approach seems very promising. If I can teach music in Latin, surely we can teach it in History. How else can we blend the arts into the mainstream public school curriculum?

It also came up in my meeting this morning with the director of the gifted ed program at the local community college. We were sitting down to brainstorm ideas for bringing extra-curricular classes into our public school district and were considering waysto construct classes that would a) appeal to a lot of kids, b) be rigorous enough that parents would pay for it but would also c) be fun enough that the kids would be enthusiastic to functionally extending their school day. So we were thinking: what makes classes fun? Mixing the arts into other subjects is one of the things we came up with.

I’m not sure I really have a point here. If I do, it’s maybe that it’s easy for us musicians (and educators too) to think of the arts as an end in itself, but it they are also valuable as a methodology. AJ got both language and music yesterday. And history too, because I took the opportunity to talk about classical Latin vs. church Latin when he asked why there were so many Christmas carols in Latin.

However, I’m not sure how I’m going to explain Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit.

Looking at Art Online

Like many school districts around the country, our district is making drastic cuts next year. Among the many devastating losses is the art program and the wonderful teachers who run it. Consequently we've been spending some extra time thinking about how to do more art at home.

Art was a big part of our daily lives when AJ was younger and was home more of the time. But since going to school full time, AJ's home art projects have tended toward the unsupervised. His school teachers do a great job at not only teaching concepts and techniques involved in making art, but in connecting those same concepts to the work of well-known artists. We're going to need to bring more of that back into the home next year.

Lucky for us, the fantastic Art Institute of Chicago is only a train ride away, and we go there as often as we can swing it. There are a number of other museums and galleries still to be explored as well. But what about the days when we can't get away?

There are a number of great art resources on the web that have brought virtual museums to life.

The Louvre offers a virtual tour of its galleries online. We also like the Louvre ap for the iTouch/iPhone. While it only has a few paintings, it does a great job of representing them. And the ap is free.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC has some great art games for children that grownups will probably enjoy as well.

And the Art Institute of Chicago has a page of online resources that include education tools for both adults and children.


AJ's art teacher also makes use of digital art programs at school and AJ loves to play with them at home.

The art teacher's favorite is Art Rage, which retails, in its full version, for $80. Not a small software investment. But the teacher says that it does the best job of mimicking the techniques of real life materials. For example, when you paint, your brush will start to run out of paint after a while, allowing you to contour your work as you would with actual paint.

But there are free programs as well. AJ and his friends love Tux Paint, a program designed specifically for children that builds in silly sound effects to go along with their artwork.

For 3-d, Google Sketchup is fantastic. It's a complex program that can be used for some pretty serious adult projects, but after a tutorial, it's simple enough that children can use it too. AJ is designing his own town and loves the ability to look on all sides of his buildings, even from underneath.

Do you have favorite online resources for art? Tell us about them!

Teaching Art

As we're facing the elimination of art and music education in our school district next year, I've been looking for ways to teach it at home. Here are some art lesson plans from the Denver Museum of Art aimed at K-5.

March Book Review

My daughter Dusty is a budding artist. I’ll admit the deck has been stacked in her favor since before birth. My parents are both artists as are my sister and brother-in-law. So it’s in the genes. But, I’ve always felt art education as important as the ABCs so there have always been art supplies on hand since she was old enough to hold a crayon and scribble (at 16 months old, but who’s counting?). Once, I bought huge rolls of brown paper which were cut, in four- or five-foot increments, and taped to the floor so she could color and draw and there was room for us to draw as well.

Turns out, Dusty’s got talent and an eye for color. Her drawings are, developmentally, beyond her peers. She’s discovering perspective and point of view.

Recently, we read “The Artsy Smartsy Club” by Daniel Pinkwater. In it, the children create an art club and visit a museum to educate themselves about art and the artists who created the pieces. One museumgoer discusses Vincent Van Gogh with the children and they become acquainted with two of his most famous paintings, “Starry Night” and “Sunflowers.”

Because I am a hopeless nerd (or a librarian wanna be), I went looking for copies of the paintings for us to look at as we read (and it will not surprise you to learn that we had books in the house with those paintings – in Dusty’s room, no less!). We talked a bit about Van Gogh but I couldn’t let it rest.

I went to the library soon after and found a couple of books to further our impromptu study of Van Gogh, the Impressionists, and art in general. Here’s what I found:

The Starry Night by Neil Waldman is about a young boy (Bernard) in New York City who meets a painter named Vincent. Vincent has just arrived in New York and is looking for things to paint. Bernard gives him a tour of his favorite places – Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, etc. “Vincent’s” paintings grace the pages. Only the painting themselves are in color. The rest of the book is done in brown ink on brown paper. They go to MOMA and find a painting that looks just like the ones Vincent’s already painted. As soon as Bernard asks whether this is one of his, Vincent disappears. Bernard decides to try his hand at painting. He’s been officially inspired. The story is simple but effective. It helps lay the groundwork for an appreciation of art. The endpapers of the book showcase the work of school children: their renditions of “Starry Night.”

No One Saw – Ordinary Things Through the Eyes of an Artist by Bob Raczka is a bit more elementary in nature. Truly an basic introduction to art and artists and while good for the beginner, may be a little light for the more advanced art appreciater in your family. Each page presents a painting by a famous artist, one that represents the kind of work they are most known for. To the side, in one sentence, is a statement about what this painter does best. “No one saw flowers like Georgia O’Keefe” by a painting of lilies. “No one saw mothers like Mary Cassatt.” 16 artists are represented. 16 different styles ranging from Van Gogh to Grant Wood to Andy Warhol. Biographical notes for each artist are appended.

This book is a nice one to have in a classroom. It might work well as an introduction for an art lesson but it doesn’t offer much beyond that. If you have a young art lover at home, especially a fairly precocious one with a long attention span, I’d recommend a larger coffee-table type book that covers a range of artists within a particular style that offers more paintings by each artist with more biographical information. I’d also recommend a book that includes more than just paintings.

Picture This! Activities and Adventures in Impressionism by Joyce Raimondo hits closer to what I was looking for for Dusty. This is a particularly good book for homeschoolers and parents who want to present “art lessons” in a more structured format. There is some discussion about Impressionism – what it is and how it was received during its heyday. There is discussion about color, color wheels, experimentation, and observation of nature.

Paintings by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro and Cassatt are used as a jumping-off point for further study. Study this painting. What do you see? Can you tell what time of day it is? What season is it? How can you tell? Is the wind is blowing? From what direction? What techniques does the artist use to show this? Now, paint your own favorite outdoor place.

There are step-by-step instructions for making “art inspired by Monet,” as well as using different methods and materials to do things like watercolor, tissue paper, pastels, plastic foam painting, plaster gauze, printing with sponges. You can even try your hand at pointillism using q-tips or experimenting with facial expressions and movement. There’s a lot to this slender book and it’s my favorite “how to” art book so far. It’s not too advanced for a kid like Dusty nor is it too basic. I may end up buying it so we can have it as a reference.

All that being said, Dusty still tends to do her own thing. These books are more used for general inspiration and reference. They’re good to just have around the house. Like a box of band aids, you never know when you’re going to need one so it’s important to stock up.