Rock and Roll and Sculpture!

This week I was really excited because we were able to learn about my favorite musical genre - rock and roll, baby! The boys started out the week learning about "The King" of rock and roll himself - Elvis Presley, then moved on to The Beatles, and after that I let them choose whomever they would like to learn about, as long as it related to rock and roll. Ethan ended his week researching my all-time favorite band, Aerosmith!

In addition to our music for the week, we have also been trying our hands at sculpture, which we all found is much harder than it looks! I purchased some air-dry clay for us to use, but we quickly discovered that it is very difficult to get it to stick together before it dries. Most of our works of art crumbled pretty quickly. Here is a glimpse of my art project before it completely fell apart.

On Thursday, we took a little road trip east to Dallas. What week of learning about rock and roll would be complete without a trip to the Hard Rock Cafe? We enjoyed our delicious lunch, and the kids were able to see some great memorabilia from artists they have been learning about throughout the week.

Elvis's hat and outfit from one of his movies

A Beatles jacket (of course)

We had to stop to get a picture of a huge poster of one of my favorite bands at the House of Blues!

After lunch, we walked a few blocks over to the Dallas Museum of Art. The general admission to this museum is free, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much they had to see with the free admission! We made sure to pay special attention to the sculptures, since that was our focus this week, but I was also happy to see some paintings by some of my favorite Impressionist painters, and Alex enjoyed the Picassos as well.

Alex enjoyed making sketches of some of his favorite pieces.

This one scared Alex a bit.

The DMA also has a huge sculpture garden outside where you can walk around to view the art, or just sit and relax a bit or enjoy a bite to eat. Next door to the DMA is the Nasher Sculpture Center, but I had a very tired a cranky three-year-old, so we will hopefully check that out next time.

On our way back to the parking garage, we had to stop by to check out Klyde Warren Park. This great park located in the middle of the city is fairly new, and has many food trucks, lots of great places to sit and relax, and a fun kids area to explore, which included a unique splash pad and climbing obstacles.

We don't get the chance to go to Dallas often, so it was nice to go and discover some of the great things the city has to offer. The kids really enjoyed themselves, and I was pleasantly surprised how much they enjoyed visiting the art museum (especially my little creative buddy, Alex).

At the end of next week, we will be making a road trip across Texas, so to prepare us for the journey, we will be learning about country music and drawing! Hope you come visit us again next week!

Gospel music and religious art

We are back again for another exciting week of learning about music and art this summer! This week, we had a little more laid-back approach, since we had Vacation Bible School all week long.

The music for this week was Gospel music, which the kids were able to enjoy every single morning at VBS. Juliet is still going around the house singing all of the wonderful songs they sang! They delighted us all with a performance on Thursday night of all the songs they learned.

After VBS on Monday, our local library had a music program of their own, focusing specifically on percussion instruments. Mark Shelton impressed the audience with his amazing percussion skills, including the hang and the hammered dulcimer.

He was an amazing percussionist, and Alex went around the whole house for the rest of the day banging on anything he could get his hands on! If you want to check out some of his skills, make sure to check out his YouTube page at: https://www.youtube.com/user/marksheltonmusic

For our artwork this week, Juliet, Alex and I used a Bible quote coloring book to color some pages for their father for a special Father's Day present.

It was such a busy week that there wasn't much extra time for exploring some art museums like I planned to do, but I hope to share some of that with you next week! Next week, we are moving on to rock and roll music and sculpture! Hope you are having as much fun this summer as we are!

Classical music and painting!

Hello everyone!

I know I am running a little behind on my weekly blog, but things have been happening a mile a minute around here! We are very busy busy busy this summer!

I briefly mentioned before that we were spending just a little over a week focusing on classical music and painting for the week. This week, the boys studied various composers and listened to clips of their songs as well. They even learned about a few I had never heard of! We listened to little snippets of classical music throughout the week, but the real fun came when we were able to visit a special program in Arlington that is put on by the Arlington Symphony, which introduces kids to the various instruments of the orchestra and then allows them to have an "instrument petting zoo" and try them out for themselves! We were also able to listen to a professional clarinet player who is a member of the orchestra. Here are a few of the pictures below:

Alex and Juliet really enjoyed trying out all of the different instruments. They also listened to the story "Zin, Zin, a Violin," which is a great story to introduce children to various instruments. It was nice for them to branch out from our usual piano, guitar, and French horn that are frequently played in the summer months at home. My goal is to get each of them playing at least one tune on the piano by the end of the summer.

We ended our fun day in Arlington by enjoying some time at a new playground. We don't leave our town much normally, so it was nice to get out and explore another city for the day. (We also made sure to point out the usual Arlington sites, such as Six Flags, AT&T Stadium, and Globe Life Park.)

I have already showed a few pictures of their paintings for the week, but we continued different painting projects, including some spray painting of our outdoor furniture. My project for the week was adding a little extra pizzazz to our new fire pit.

We checked out a few books about painters at the library as well, and the kids enjoyed learning about Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, and Picasso.

For the next week, we had Vacation Bible School all week, so our main focus was Gospel music and religious art! Stay tuned!

A new year and new learning fun!

Hello everyone!

We are back at it for our summer fun and learning, and this year's theme is art and music! This week, we have been focusing on painting and classical music. We got a bit of a late start, so this theme will continue into next week as well. We started out by creating some fun paintings, including a special painting project for Father's Day.

Here is a glimpse of our painting party:

Ethan's underwater creature painting

Alex's map painting

Juliet's Frozen painting

We listened to a little mix of classical music while we were painting to add to the ambience.

The boys will be researching a new composer every day and listening to little previews of their work. We will also be practicing on various instruments some of the more famous classical works. In case you haven't heard of it, a great resource for teaching children about classical music is www.classicsforkids.com. 

This site has many great resources, including music clips, biography information, and games for the children to play. Even though my sons grumbled about having to learn about classical music, they are actually starting to enjoy themselves and can even pick out certain songs now, such as Vivaldi's "Four Seasons - Spring" (my favorite!).

I will be sharing more of our fun activities throughout the summer, so stay tuned!