This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Week sixteen of school we did unit 9. Our arts topic was abstract art.

We made some Kandinsky-style art using concentric circles.

We learned about Picasso.

We made some art in the style of Picasso’s Cubism.

We made art to music, drawing whatever we felt like the music was telling us to draw.

Abstract Music Art

We did scratch art.

And we made pieces of abstract art however we wanted to make it.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Weeks fourteen and fifteen of school we did unit 8. Our arts topic was expressionism.

We looked at and discussed a whole bunch of paintings by expressionist artists.

We made pictures of the sound of things.

We rolled dice to determine how we should create a piece of art in the style of Kandinsky.

We looked at and discussed a whole bunch more paintings by expressionist artists.

We learned about Dada.

And made a Dada-esque compilation of some toys.

We learned about the Treachery of Images and drew things that were not.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Weeks twelve and thirteen of school we did unit 7. Our arts topic was post-impressionism.

We played with geometric shapes and colors.

We looked at the Starry Night on the boys’ wall and drew the shapes we saw in it.

We made teeny tiny paintings.

We drew pictures using oil pastels.

We drew pictures of animals popping out of the jungle.

We learned about pointillism and made hot air balloon pictures.

We learned about Rodin and made a sculpture out of aluminum foil.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Week eleven of school we did unit 6. Our arts topic was, again, Impressionism.

We took photos and them transformed them into works of art.

And we learned about a whole lot of impressionist painters and viewed some of their works.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Weeks nine and ten of school we did unit 5. Our arts topic was Impressionism.

We compared a Vermeer to a Monet to introduce how impressionists painted. (We all preferred the Vermeer.)

We discussed the painting that gave rise to the name Impressionism.

We went outside and did some painting ein plein air.

We learned how to paint in the impressionist style (clearly Fritz did not feel the need to paint his orc that way).

We played with different brush strokes and mixing colors.

We learned about pointillism.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Weeks seven and eight of school we did unit 4. Our arts topic was romantic art II.

We read the original version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and acted it out.

We discussed several poems from that era.

We learned about Robert Louis Stevenson.

And Charles Dickens.

We illustrated Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

We learned about Williams Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats.

And about Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley.

We listened to Beethoven’s Fifth and identified different parts of the music and watched a biography on Ludwig von Beethoven.

We watched two videos of songs by Frederic Chopin.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. Weeks five and six of school we did unit 3. Our arts topic was romantic art I.

We discussed William Blake’s The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed With the Sun.

The we drew scenes from our favorite books.

We looked at a cloudscape by John Constable.

And then went outside and looked up at the sky and created our own cloudscapes.

We discussed The Raft of Medusa by Theodore Gericault.

And George Stubbs’ Lion Attacking a Horse.

And then watched a video about the restoration of the Greek statue from which he was most likely inspired to paint all of his lions and horses.

We discussed Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix.

And watched a video about our own Statue of Liberty.

We finished up our first week learning about romantic art by watching a video about the life of Eugene Delacroix.

We learned about Francisco Goya.

We learned about sitting for portraits and then took turns sitting and drawing.

We learned about the imagination involved in romantic art.

We learned about JMW Turner (Fritz was surprised to learn that art critic is an actual job).

We learned about the Hudson River School type of art.

We learned about Caspar David Friedrich. We discussed Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog and drew our own versions of it.

We discussed other painting by Friedrich as well.

This year in school we are using Layers of Learning year 4. The second two weeks of school we did unit 2. Our arts topic was tall tales.

We talked about hyperboles and illustrated ones we made up.

We learned about Jim Bridger.

We learned about Davy Crockett. Adrian said he really understood Crockett saying “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas” because he lives in Texas and it really is that awesome.

We made up tall tales about all the amazing stuff we have most assuredly done.

We watched an old Paul Bunyan cartoon.

We learned about Mark Twain.

We watched two versions of John Henry.

We learned about Flatboat Annie.

We discussed folk heroes from tall tales and today’s superheroes and how they are similar and different.

We wrote our own tall tales about all the amazing things we could think of to have our characters do.