Incorporate Charlotte Mason's Advice into an Ordinary School Day by Using Art with All Subjects
by June Butchee
(Original published in The Teaching Home Magazine Sept/Oct 1994 with revisions by the author)
Our family has found an enjoyable way to blend art with all of our subjects. Our starting point is a specific topic. It may be a book, poem, holiday, time of year, time period in history, etc.
After determining our topic, we search through our encyclopedias, Dad's college art history book, catalogs from University Prints or the National Gallery of Art, and the library for compatible art prints to go with our study. We like to search for a poem to use also.
We don't always study an artist or print in depth. With some studies we just have one print, but with others we find several prints and include them all. As we read about the subject, the children are shown the art print and the accompanying poem. This might be anytime during the reading of a book. With projects, the art print is displayed from the beginning. Poems have been known to be used as copywork.
The current print is prominently displayed for all to enjoy in clear plastic frames. Special ones have their own frame. Loose art prints are put in plastic sheet protectors that open at the top with pre-punched holes and kept in a binder. Storing the prints in plastic allows even the youngest member of our family to look at them and still keep our prints nice for future use.
Each subject is indexed in a binder for easy reference. A spiral notebook is kept in the binder for listing prints found in various books and their source. We have enjoyed our approach so well that it has turned into a full-scale project of trying to match an art print to each topic or project that we undertake.
Listed below in greater detail are some of the actual studies we have done that will illustrate our method.
Our first study was of Benjamin west, who is known by some sources as "the father of American painting". We started by reading Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin by Marguerite Henry.
Then we looked in our hand-me-down 1950s encyclopedia set under painting, and to our surprise we found a wonderful color print of "Penn's Treaty with the Indians" painted by Benjamin West. There was also information about Benjamin West, his paintings, and painters who studied under him. Many of these painters are well known in their own right. Since we only had one example of Benjamin West's work, the next step was to go to the library and try to find more; then we could decide which one we like best. We didn't find what we were looking for in the encyclopedias, but we did find a thick biography that had a few prints and a portrait. So now we looked for another source of prints of Benjamin West's work. I wrote to request a catalog of publications from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Now we could look at more of Benjamin West's work in color, even though it was in miniature form. We did end up getting one of Benjamin West's prints and a print of his portrait from University Prints.Of course now, the prints from the National Gallery of Art can be viewed online.
In our encyclopedia we also had some prints which depicted events from America's War for Independence. This led to our next study, which coincided with the Fourth of July. We expanded this study some and ordered a set of American history prints from University Prints. The set included an artist's rendition of Paul Revere's ride, Washington crossing the Delaware, plus historical landmarks, portraits, and many others.
We chose prints for our annual holiday studies, also. For Columbus Day we always use a print of Columbus' landing that goes along with favorite books and poems. One of our favorite books is the D'Aulaire's Columbus, which has some pretty color artwork done by the authors, who illustrate all their books. Our Thanksgiving study includes favorite books and poems to go with our prints of the Pilgrims landing and the Pilgrims going to church.
During the winter we place bird feeders in our back yard to attract birds. It is amazing how many different birds you can attract this way! To accompany this project, we use postcards of the famous John James Audubon bird paintings which can be obtained from Dover Books. Most libraries carry a copy of his Birds of America.
A Spring project was growing our own birdseed by planting sunflowers. We picked a print of Monet's that had sunflowers in a vase. There is also a nice sunflower painting by Van Gogh that would work well. We planted a wildflower garden at the same time. We used a print by Camille Pissaro for this garden. One other print that would go with both projects is 'The Artist's Garden at Vetheuil' by Monet, which is available from the National Gallery of Art.
One of our most memorable studies was when we worked our way through Marguerite Henry's horse stories. She is one of my favorite authors. Wesley Dennis is the illustrator for most of Mrs. Henry's books. The stories have mostly black and white illustrations, so we used Mr. Dennis' color illustrations found in Mrs. Henry's Album of Horses. It was a treat to see some of the horses that we read about in color! We used an instructional book on how to draw horses with this study.
Because of these studies, I have collected art prints for years from calendars, date books, and daily art calendars which are kept after each day and mounted on black paper to add to our ever expanding binder. We even use art bookmarks from Dover which have our favorite artist's works on them. There are also so many sources for obtaining art prints thanks to the internet. It is very difficult to choose which one you want!
Art has added a new dimension to ordinary subjects, incorporating more of our senses into the learning process. Everyone has a positive attitude, and we all look forward to our "school time" together.