A Net in Time

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Art

Art Series: Stick It To ‘Em

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Do you like having fun with doodling?   Have you ever considered turning that art form into sticker art?   Bailey Fleming has put together a book to help you explore the sticker side of you!  🙂   It’s a bright, quirky, fun book that I think you will enjoy!

 Bailey Fleming is an Arkansas born lass whose sister introduced her to the world of stickers.  She claims not to be an artist, but rather a person who likes to show some sass  in her stickers and to encourage others to not let their awkwardness or cynicism from stopping their creative expression.

To wit, she created a book to encourage that exploration.

 I like how she started off her book.   Explaining her thinking.  Doodles .. into stickers… equals making others smile.   So have fun in your doodling.

The first 31 pages are dedicated to teaching and training.   From what type of materials to use, to how to draw some of the artwork seen throughout the book. I really appreciated this section.  To see the different steps you need to create the end product, and the full colour pictures in the tool section, just marvellous! 

The remainder of the book is divided into
Coloured stickers:

Black and white outline Stickers.  Wouldn’t they be fun to fill in, stick on a card and send along to make someone’s day?

Make your own stickers. Each box makes it own sticker for you to share with other and hopefully bring about smiles on your friends faces.   Discover your own sass and style.

You see…that’s the point of the whole book.  Not just for an artist to show off her work, but seriously… to help people be inspired and create their own work.   

More than 275 stickers, divided by rough estimate into a third each.  Give them to your friends, your family and even your frenemies.  Share the joy and the sass with everyone.  🙂

AND you get lots of stickers that are full colour so you can share them on cards or notes, others that you can fill in and start to discover your own style, and then spread your wings and fly, sharing your style with those around you and bringing smiles to their faces. 

 Title: Stick it to ’em – Playful stickers to color and create.
Author: Bailey Fleming
Publisher: Walter Foster 

Reviewed for The Quatro Group

Where can you find it?
 Amazon.ca – Stick it to ‘Em: Playful Stickers to Color & Create: 275+ stickers with sass for family, friends, and frenemies

Amazon.com – Stick it to ‘Em: Playful Stickers to Color & Create: 275+ stickers with sass for family, friends, and frenemies

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Art Series: A Boy Named Giotto.

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 I want to thank Kirsten for coming to my rescue this week with another guest post with an art book.  I am SO pleased to have learned about this neat book.   Won’t you join me in learning about it?

This is a wonderful treasure of a book that tells the
life of Giotto and explains his drive to create art that led him to
become one of the greatest painters of all time.

This is a book that tells most in its pictures and has
little text, although the reading level is beyond the reach of little
ones. It is a perfect book to give to older school-aged children and even
teens. But I used it as a read aloud book so my children could listen,
look at the glorious pictures, and discuss ideas that came up along the
way.

You can pair this book with a number of other activities
like painting with egg (as Giotto did), reading a short biography of
his life, and perusing a book by Madeline L’Engle that is filled with
his pictures telling the story of the life of Jesus.

So pick up “A Boy Named Giotto” at a bookstore or library today and open up a window to the past for your children.

Additional resources:



Egg painting activity – just like Giotto

The Glorious Impossible by Madeline L’Engle:A retelling of the 25 important events in the life of Jesus in a beautiful picture book.

Title: A Boy Named Giotto
Author: Paolo Guarnieri

Where can you find it?
Amazon.ca: A Boy Named Giotto

Amazon.com: A Boy Named Giotto

Kirsten West is a Christian Homeschooling Mom who blogs at DoodleMom’s Homeschooling Life.  Isn’t she a delight?   She found time in the midst of a crazy busy week to share this lovely find with us.  THANK YOU Kirsten!  🙂

Learn more about Giotto, through Amazon.com:

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

The Week of American Goldfinches in Colour

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Check it out… my Spring Bed is out in good form this week.  Must like all the rain we’ve been having!  I just love walking up and seeing them all in bloom… just makes my heart smile!

Saturday:
I brought this cutie to London.   DaisyHawk in one of my favourite does, but it was time for her to find a new home.   She’ll be living on a farm in St. Thomas. 

Sunday:
Headed off to Kingsville so hubby could preach in the church of some friends.  Then had a lovely visit in the afternoon with them.  We went for a walk and my son was able to see Cactus growing in the wild in Ontario.

Monday:
We planned to go to London, but the lad developed a sore throat and was acting a touch troubled, so we called gramma who said “I’ll come your way”.  Once she arrived we headed out so we could get our taxes done, have a lunch out with hubby and so I could sell this cutie.

I bought a slingshot…
Tuesday:
 The lad’s sore throat has resolved itself into a cold.  It’s a bleak rainy day.  We did some schooling with emphasis on “school should not cause tears” and chilled out in the afternoon doing laundry and watching movies.

Wednesday:
 The lad was not feeling okay this morning yet, draggy and more apologetic than normal.  So he stayed home to do minimal schooling (just on-line stuff needed for reviews) and his reading.   I headed off to the

We had lunch together and chatted. I cleaned the fridge (being fairly brutal) and by the end we had a half empty fridge!!! 

Finished the laundry from yesterday, did some blogging and the lad made me supper (eggs/bacon/cheese scramble).  Took pictures of my bunny babes and then decided to cut the lawn.  Not the smartest idea as now I’m really tired and sore.   BUT HEY!!   The lawn is done and now the rain can come again and it won’t be a jungle when it stops again (apparently not until Monday!!!!).

Hubby pointed out that our Regular Pairs of American Goldfinch are back and … are almost back to breeding plumage.  

Thursday:
Today we did things differently than normal.  We made muffins, made the Millenium Falcon, built a hydraulic claw and made a simple drawing for art on Friday.   The lad did do his devotions and his Veritas Press History lesson.

Friday:
Dad had a funeral to preach so we dropped him off  as we headed off to visit a friend and do an art project.   Linoleum Printing.   It was rather fun to do!   Look!   I did a budgie!

Reviews:
Mission to Pluto.  A neat trip with a scientist to Pluto.
ArtAchieve.  A neat art program that we like. 
Millennium Falcon, Star Wars Builders.   A really neat kit for building a replica Millennium Falcon.

Homeschooling:
Art Class, different than one-on-one.  This post part of a crew round up post.
Art Book Series: Spot the Differences.  Guest post about a neat art book
Prickly Pear Cactus.  ABC blogging post, native cactus to Canada.
Books Read in April.   The books we read in April.  A link up post.

Everything Else:
Recipe: Rice-Cheese balls.  An interesting new recipe.  A link up post.
Springtime, a poem.  Just a simple poem about spring.
The Prince’s Portion.  Devotion on Ezekiel 45:7-25
The Greatest Should.  Word prompt on the word Should… what is the greatest should?

Linking Up at The Following Places.

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Art Class, Different than One-on-One

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 Over this past year I tried to get my homeschool co-op to come out to my place to do a bi-weekly art lesson with the lad and I but…no one came out.  I guess they thought the half-hour drive was too much to bear.   I wanted to do an art class because doing art as a group is much different than doing art one-on-one.

So when it came time to do our spring co-op again I thought, I’m going to do an art class.

We had FUN!   I did a class on Zentangles and I have to admit.. it was BY FAR the easiest class I have ever done for co-op.

Grab the book: Zentangle: The inspiring and mindful drawing workbook with over 70 practice tiles

Grab a bunch of children.
Set them down with some paper and pencils and watch them go.  Seriously.. we had fun.
My job?   Simple.
Give some basic instruction first day… see.. look at these different zentangles.  This one is called ____, that one is called ______.  Practice a few of them.  We practiced on 2 x 2 squares of paper.

My job?  Offer encouragement, show what you can do different… if you space the lines farther apart or turn the tangle upside down.  “AH!!!”   one boy said.. “I can turn it into wheat!” while a girl said “I can make those vines into ropes if I add some twisty lines”.

I LOVE THAT STUFF!   Seriously.  I do not consider myself artistic.. I hated school and having to all do the exact same thing when doing art.  HATED IT.   But I do have a knack for taking ideas and presenting them to children and then seeing them literally FLY with it.   I LOVE THAT.

For week two I asked them.. what do you want to do?  Do you want to practice more on the 2 x 2 sheets OR would you like to see what you can do with objects?     Objects it was, so I brought in a variety of half sheet images.  Some pokemon, some birds, some puppies etc.   Things I thought the children might be interested in..and let them go to work.   I just pulled up free colouring pages from on-line, resizing them to fit the page.

This proved to be what the children wanted to do.   Fill in images and make their zentangles, or doodles with a purpose, practical.

I quickly discovered one young lady had an affinity for doing bible verses.  Her mom told me how delighted she was that I allowed her to do what she wanted to do and didn’t make her do what the others were.   This picture is partially done.  She did another one that was much bigger and filled with hearts around the John 3:16 verse.  Simple and well done.

Another young lady turned out these amazingly well done drawings.   She hopes to turn them into a book and maybe sell them.   I told her she had the skill to do so.

 Another young lady tried her hand at making her own outline and then filling it in.  Isn’t she doing an great job?  I was so proud of her and pleased with her work.

My young fellows weren’t really keen on me taking pictures of them working.   In fact one refused, so I went with it.  🙂  We did careful behind the scenes pictures.  I’m not supposed to let it be too big, but pleased I was with their work.   For their final project white shirt did a zentangle with french symbols to be filled out, and striped shirt did a series of intricate lines inside a pokemon figure.

This young lady learned to fit the zentangle drawings to the outline she was using.   By the time she had this one finished, it would have been a joy to colour in and see all those sweeping lines.   Not just done in pencil, but in fine tipped marker as well.

The bulk of the class was just me doing around and saying well done, have you thought about using this idea?   Oh.. I like how you added some blockiness to that, or see how the lines sweep here?.. what kind of doodle do you think will fit well there?    Encouragement along with different images to fill.. it was just an easy, laid back class filled with laughter and beauty.  

 Didn’t they do an excellent job?  I was so immensely pleased with all of them.  It was amazing to see their different styles?   A couple of the children made “cheat sheets” for themselves, choosing zentangles they particularly liked and putting them on a sheet.

This post is part of the Homeschool Crew Art Round up.  It will probably open up on Friday morning.

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Art Book Series: Spot the Differences

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HI!   Guess what, Joanna is nice enough to guest post for me with what sounds like a fascinating book.  Joanna commented on my blog about this book and I asked if she’d please please please write a blog post for me as I wanted you all to know about it too!   Come check it out with me eh? 
I am always looking for ways to keep my boys interested in learning about art. 

We
have read many great books about artists, carried out artist studies
complete with copied works, and go on field trips to local art museums.  

But
I always wanted my boys to really stop and study the works of art.
 Look for the nuances that make them so spectacular, learn the names of
major works of art and the artists who painted them.  

I
was so thrilled when I stumbled upon the Spot the Differences book!  So
far we only have book 1 but there are 4 of them in the series.  

I love this series because my boys were excited about using it!  

The
book has 25 famous paintings– each painting is pictured twice.  The
first page shows the original painting complete with name and date it
was painted.  The opposing page shows the same picture with anywhere
from 6-14 change and you are challenged to find all the differences
between the original work of art and the changed picture.  There is an
answer key in the back of the book if you get stumped and a handy box
for checking off all the differences you have found. 



 Surrounding
both pictures are snippets of information about the artist, the
painting itself, and some facts about the historical period in which the
artist lived and painted. 

It has made art study so fun! 

  You can find Joanna over at Our Unschooling Journey Through Life.   Do be sure to visit her there as well eh?

Where can you find it:
 Amazon.com: Spot the Differences Book 1: Art Masterpiece Mysteries (Dover Children’s Activity Books)

Amazon.ca: Spot the Differences Book 1: Art Masterpiece Mysteries




Joanne Rawson is the author of the blog Our Unschooling Journey.
Known around the web as Mother of 3, Joanne began her blog when she
first started homeschooling her three boys in 2012. She lives in
Connecticut with her family and enjoys reading, crafting, and
travelling… all of which usually ends up on her blog.

Social Media:

 

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Review: ArtAchieve

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Imagine taking an art class in the comfort and freedom of your own home… professional lessons, art lessons for children, provided by ArtAchieve.  I don’t know if you remember that the lad and I reviewed this last year, and were delighted to review for ArtAchieve again, this year broaching the Entire Level III.  Boy.. has it been fun.  🙂

One of the things I love, after various conversations with John, is how he holds true to his statements.
He believes anyone can learn to draw, that it is not a skill only for the talented but for anyone.  It’s a necessary skill that improves one’s abilities in many other subjects. He structures his lessons in such a way that if you want to learn to draw a cat, your cat will LOOK like a cat.  🙂  At the same time, he leaves plenty of room for creative self-expression, so the cat you draw will be YOUR cat, not his, not your neighbours, but all yours.   Learning to draw means paying attention to what you are observing, it means thinking creatively which spills over to other subjects.  Doing art helps you cover history, geography, literature and more.   I know it has helped us in our Canadian Studies!  🙂

Come.. explore ArtAchieve with us, won’t you?

Once you have logged into ArtAchieve you will be brought to a page with all your lessons.

Each lesson, if you click on the (+) sign opens into usually four sections.

The way you approach the lesson influences which version you use.  My son wasn’t keen on the video as he needed to stop and start it all the time.   He would rather not do that.  He quickly learned that the powerpoint version worked best for him.   One slide at a time with little dots below that he could shift between.  He could quickly skip ahead to see the final result or he could jump a few buttons back to review that he did a step properly.

The son was busy.. ever so busy with having fun about the armadillo as a turtle rabbit.  I raise rabbits so he was bugging me about how many some of them might want to become turtles so I better watch out for turtle rabbits. AND DON’T get him started on the German.. oh my!!!!    11 year olds and their sense of humour eh?  We could just see those little armoured turtle rabbits running around.  It just made us laugh together. 🙂  Each lesson John adds these “curriculum connectors” as I call them, where he gives some of the history of the animal used, or the art form involved.  He throws in history, geography, science and what not.  Art is such a cross-curricular subject and it just neat to see the Cross Curricular Connections he makes.

Each lesson starts off the same (except for the stop action lesson at the end of level three).  A line drawing to complete (so you can practice drawing the parts of the subject matter) and a supplies list.  You can also find a supply list for all the lessons under supplies when you login, though I found it wasn’t as complete as the in-lesson supply list.

We ran into one lesson where we didn’t have the acrylic paints needed so I emailed John to find out how necessary they were or if we could make do with oil or tempura paints, or if pencil crayons might work as well.   He said “Go ahead all those will work”.  🙂  So we did.   I just love art programs that are accommodating as that’s how I approach art! I figure what is important.. the medium or the learning the style taught?   Granted, if a lesson is about HOW to do work with pastels.. well..then you want to use pastels.  But this lesson was about how to do form lines and plain lines so the materials used didn’t matter quite as much.

Each lesson contains a different art lessons, whether about form lines, working in 3rds, or working with different mediums like glue and aluminum foil.    The art lessons are short and illustrated well.  

The lad and I finished two projects.  We worked through them slowly as that helps my perfectionist son take the time that needs to do a job well.

For this project we were supposed to draw an armadillo.
But the lad wanted to do a pokemon character and I thought
I’d try a cat.   The lad helped with the cat feet as I was struggling with them,
I helped the lad with curving the leaves of his Oddish.
The lad thoroughly enjoyed this project once he saw it finished!
This totem project was a time-taker.  
We did one section at a time to draw, doing the black form lines went quickly.
The lad was hesitant about doing the colour, until he started
and then he figured out how he wanted it to go.

One of the things I really appreciated was how John showed us different options for how a finished project might look.  Sometimes they were quite different from each other but it drove home how different people do can do the same art project and have it turn out completely differently.  It gave the lad the freedom he needed to do his OWN art. We talked alot doing each art piece, discussing methods, colour, types of pencils, marker yes or not, how to make easy lines within a colour (use white crayon!) and so much more.  We learned alot about the Pacific coast people.  Here’s a bit we learned while doing our totem poles.
In fact we actually have a problem… we don’t agree on which project we should do next… should it be the frog (the lad) or the Canada geese (me)?   We can put a Canadian spin on both you know?  🙂

I have to admit, I’m looking forward to when we do the Canada Goose lesson, check out some of the Cross Curricular Connections we’ll be able to do.   We’ll be able to visit websites to learn facts about geese, do a character study via youtube, read good books about geese, and more.  I can see us looking up Canada Geese migrating and perhaps finding out why some geese stick around all winter!  You find this under the art lessons tab.

If you are intrigued by ArtAchieve I strongly urge you to try out the free lesson!  See for yourself if John’s way of teaching works well for you.  🙂  Really.. you won’t regret it!

Vendor: ArtAchieve
Product Name and Links: Entire Level III

Cost For Level Three: Individual Lesson $6 each, bundles of three for $16, or the entire course for $58.50
Received: One Year of Level III.

100 of us are reviewing John’s great art program.  Click here to read more (or the image below).     The other levels are: Entire Level I , Entire Level II and Entire Level IV

http://schoolhousereviewcrew.com/art-lessons-inspired-from-around-the-world-artachieve-reviews/

Social Media Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Artachieve   @ArtAchieve
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnahofland   @johnahofland
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArtAchieve   @ArtAchieve
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/artachieve   artachieve
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+JohnHoflandartachieve   ArtAchieve

Hashtags: #hsreviews  #artachieve, #artlessonsforkids, #homeschool #artclassesforkids, #drawinglessonsforkids

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Do you think it could be a good weapon?

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Saturday:
We’d had tentative plans to go to a home and garden show but life proved very busy this week so we stayed home.  I got some gardening done, the lad worked on some big minecraft project he has going, and hubby did something (honestly can’t remember.. OH right.. he worked on a sermon).

Sunday:
Hubby preached at a wee tiny church, they fed us lunch, I looked around in their church and oh my goodness it was beautiful in the main sanctuary!!!

 I went for a walk in the afternoon with the lad from what I recall.   Oh I did!   I took some pictures of the flowers etc that I saw along the way. 

Monday: 
Kumon Math Pre-Algebra, The Typing Coach, Reading from Shepherd, Spy, Potter and the Star Namer, Smartick, Veritas Press History and Bible, and… something else that neither of us can remember. 🙂   He then went off to visit gramma while Dad and I kibitized about town .. We had lunch at 168 Sushi, went for a walk, and kept ourselves busy for a spell.  When we got home the lad wanted to go for a walk with me so out we headed, walking around the dam and it’s lake.

Tuesday: 
Kumon Math Pre-Algebra, The Typing Coach, Reading from Shepherd, Spy, Potter and the Star Namer, Smartick, Veritas Press History and Bible, Art Achieve, and Digital Savvy. 

We watched this really interesting video while doing our Art Achieve.

The
lad’s turn to make supper so he learned to make hamburger buns from
scratch as he wants to have hamburgers for supper, and we went for walk. The Lad had a hoot helping to make buns this afternoon, and I learned that girls and boys have a different perspective on kneading bread.  🙂  The lad asked “Do you think it could be a good weapon?  Imagine it stuck to the visor of a knight’s helmet!”
Wednesday: 
I spent the morning at the Foodbank and the lad stayed home to work on his Cacti Presentation for the Project Fair Friday night.   In the evening he has karate and I’ll be going to the Hospital Rummage Sale.  Hubby had an appreciation luncheon to go to at one of the Nursing homes he helps preach at.   I found six books and 6 shirts at the sale.  I went looking for shirts that would work as scrum around the house and rabbitry as almost all my old shirts have holes that my lad is telling me I shouldn’t have holes, so I’m thinking they aught to be dumped eh?   (turned into rabbitry or shop rags more likely)
After the luncheon hubby mowed the rather large church lawn… took forever it seemed.  The lad accompanied him so he could pick up all the big branches and get them out of dad’s way.  I mowed the lawn at home… boy… it’s always a slog doing the first few cuts of the year…the grass is so thick in the back.  But it’s done and it looks SO much better.   I was able to enjoy the flowers in the front yard while I cut though.  🙂 

Thursday: 
Schooling and gardening.   It was a simple but focused day.   Oh, we started a new studying using SchoolhouseTeachers.com as Veritas Press Bible course is done for the year.    The lad tightened up his Cacti presentation and I took some pictures of the rabbits.  We also went for a walk around town.  I was reminded WHY I like walking trails as my feet were sore by the time we got home walking around in town on the sidewalks.

Friday:
The last day of HOPE day Co-op.. ever so depressing… I like having a co-op to teach and do things with and seeing the creativity in others just boggles my mind.  🙂

Reviews: 
Review: Planet 316.
Review: Curious Constructions.

Homeschooling: 
Art Book Series: How to draw
Blogging the Alphabet: OHIP 
Team Sports or Individual Which Works?

Everything Else: 
Recipe: Sweet Rolls.
Hymn Study: Rise Up O Men of God.
I saw the word More.
Guest Post at Carol’s.  The Chains of History. 
The Excellent Wife Series: Chapter Five.  

Linking Up at The Following Places.

   Family Friday LinkUp.
Encouraging hearts & Home blog hop. 
This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/