The Art Lesson

I enjoy using Five in a Row's idea of reading the same story for five days and using it as a jumping point for different areas of learning.

For our storybook we read The Art Lesson by Tomie dePaola. It's a story that Tomie tells from his childhood when his first love of art began.

Social Studies- We talked about the places that Tommy's grandparents came from (Italy and Ireland) then we discussed our own heritage and where our ancestors originally came from and found them on a map.

Language Arts- We folded a piece of paper into 8 parts and wrote on each part a colour from the box of School Crayons. The kids coloured each rectangle the appropriate colour.

My 5 year old did a good job transcribing the words.

Art- We drew pictures with crayons of things that were special to us just like Tommy did.

My 6 year old drew pictures of his favourite teddy bears.

Math- We made a little grocery store with items from our cupboards (like the grocery store Tommy's grandparents ran). The kids labeled each item with a price and I divided out to them pretend money (the coins manipulatives from our math program) and let them take turns buying and selling things in the store.

Geography: A Visual Encyclopedia

Science- We discussed where chalk comes from. (The art teacher always carries a box of chalk with her.) Chalk is made from gypsum crystals so we watched a movie about those crystals and then another movie about the famous cave in Mexico full of giant gypsum crystals. We also read from our Geography: A Visual Encyclopedia about crystals. Then we proceeded to start our experiment of growing our own crystals: making rock candy.

Resources:
Amazon: The Art Lesson
Homeschoolshare: The Art Lesson
Youtube: Gypsum Crystal
Youtube: Cave of Crystals
Amazon: Geography: A Visual Encyclopedia