Today was the perfect day to pull out our new Olympic Art Pastel lesson book on the kindle fire. It was overcast (rare for Arizona) and just enough nip in the air to make these desert dwellers feel in the mood for the upcoming winter Olympics.
We’ve been using A Simple Start in Chalk Pastels this year for our art lessons and just loving it. They are written so that anyone can use them, no matter what their art background is. I’m thankful for this since my artistic skill starts and stops with stick figures for the most part. Given my boys love of all things active and Olympian, we were thrilled to dive in to the Winter Olympic edition of this art program. I love that it has a glossary so we are learning true artist terms/techniques plus HOW to use them! Of course the boys love the slightly messy factor. I’m thankful that it isn’t as messy as paint.
As we reminisced back to the last Olympics, we remembered that the boys favorite sport was the bobsledding. They were obsessed and pretended to bobsled endlessly for weeks with the kitchen stools. In light of that, we chose to tackle the bobsled team tutorial first!
It was the perfect way to end our afternoon before heading into dinner prep! We laughed, drew and got messy. And I didn’t freak out too much. ok, until my five year old started using his shirt as a towel… I’m a work in progress.
I’m hoping we will have better luck finding some interesting sports to watch this year. We were pretty disappointed with the sports selections from the last summer Olympics. {Was anyone else able to see anything other than volleyball or swimming before the kids went to bed?} With Olympic fever in the house, we’ll be tackling the Olympic torch tutorial next and then some ideas from my Olympic pinterest board. I’m thinking icehockey in a casserole pan looks like fun!
Kristin says
I’m so glad you posted this. It goes perfectly with our plans for next week and I can drop some of our silly olympic art projects for a real art lesson–awesome! I’ll check out your pinterest board too. 🙂
Heather Haupt says
It is wonderful when you can combine a fun theme like this with a real art lesson! We love them.
Heather says
I love this idea! I’ve been looking up Olympic lapbooks. Hmmm… Olympic art? How cool!
Nana says
Good Morning! This is Nana from Hodgepodge! I just saw your wonderful paintings from our Olympic Pastel book and I wanted to let you know that I am thrilled with your work and want you to know: You ARE artists!!
Love,
Nana