My sister again came up today to do our Fine Arts Co-Op (I'm heading there next month). Today our musical focus was on the tuba, drums, and composer Scott Joplin. Our art focus was on drawing heads correctly and Pablo Picasso.
- Read about tubas in Story of the Orchestra and listen to the CD track
- We watched this video first on YouTube about how tubas are made and then this one of a tuba solo.
- The boys then each gave us one thing they learned about tubas and created a mini-book.
- We then moved on to the drums reading about them in Story of the Orchestra.
- We watched this video on YouTube about how drum shells are made.
- Then we watched this video of a 16-year-old boy play a really cool drum solo. Yes, I know drum kits aren't used in the orchestra but it's still fun to watch.
- The boys then listed four things they learned about drums and created a mini-book.
- The boys colored a picture of Scott Joplin while my sister read to them about his life from Lives of the Musicians and the Young Composers book.
- The boys each gave us one thing they learned about Scott Joplin.
- We then created a notebook page. We used one that I found for free online here. It's page #11 in this set. I had the boys add a photo of Scott Joplin (I found one online, copied it to MS Word, and made it small enough to fit), born/death dates, place of birth, names of 1-2 famous pieces, and they each had to give us one thing they learned. Then they picked three to add to their page.
- Finished up our music portion by listening to "Maple Leaf Rag" by Joplin. This was one my sister's Meet the Masters CD but it can be heard on YouTube as well.
- Watched Lesson 12 in "God & the History of Art" about "Other Periods & Artists" (This is our last one. I'm going to miss the art history although I'm tempted to have the boys go through it again.)
- Continued with "Portraits & Anatomy" in "Beginning Drawing IV" by Barry Stebbing. He taught how to draw a head with correct proportions.
- Read about Pablo Picasso in Art in Story
- Watched this video on YouTube of Pablo Picasso actually painting. Fair warning...Picasso loved the female figure. We only watched the first 50 seconds to see him do the very first drawing. The next two are somewhat abstract but I have a teenage boy and they weren't abstract enough.
- Listed four things on the board and created an Artist Biography page.
- We then went to a really fun website and each boy created a "Picasso Head." In fact, I had to go and do my own once they were all done.