Artists and Art (and SOTW 1) - Cave Painting

Well, the plan was to wait until August to start Story of the World Volume 1, but it just seemed that we couldn't wait.  We'll probably be finished or closed to finished the first volume by September at the rate we are going and we are doing far fewer activities than I imagined.  Bear is just interested in the story and the map work and that is perfectly fine with me.  That means we can save all those activities for when J-jo is older and can appreciate them. (There will be no mummified chicken here!)

However, we did manage to tie in our weekly artist (okay, so no, I am not keeping up with the blogging of the artists, but we are doing one weekly) with SOTW, although we are indeed farther into the book.  It doesn't seem to matter, as whatever picture book or activity we do belatedly is simply review.

The invitation:

I set this up in our hallway and waited for the kids to get interested.

We had read a bit about the Lascaux Cave (Mystery of the Lascaux Cave in the above photo was very good) and I had shown them pictures on the internet of those cave paintings  before setting this up.  Interestingly, the original cave is very rigidly protected from visitors, but they have recreated the entire caves for the general public to visit! France field trip, anyone?

The kids each had their own "cave wall" (brown paper Trader Joe bags).

We used oil pastels and it really was more for the experience than to keep the work of art for posterity.  The cave dwellers actually blew powdered paint over their hands in creating their hand art, but we just traced ours.

image from http://www.tenebrae.org/coursework/lecture-notes/art-aesthetics.htm

I remembered that my Artistic Pursuits book had a page on cave paintings, so we read that info and did the cave painting art appreciation section.

Some books we've read about nomads and cave dwellers include,
Stone Age Boy (I actually have yet to read this, but Bear read it to herself and highly recommends it)
The First Dog by Jan Brett,
Maria De Sautuola: Discoverer of the Bulls in the Cave
and Little Grunt and the Big Egg by Tomie dePaola, which was a funny (very fictional) read.

I have a few more coming from the library...the problem with relying heavily on the library is that you don't always have your books exactly when you would prefer them, but I am so thankful for the library that I won't complain!