LA Fair photos

Artist Tea featuring Giotto

This week our featured artist was Giotto. Giotto was a student of Cimabue. Giotto was a shepherd boy painting on rocks in the fields. Story has it that Cimabue was traveling through an saw Giotto drawing. He was quite impressed with Giotto's work for his young age and decided to ask him to be his apprentice. Giotto was later to take art during this time in a new direction. Not only painting were filled with people and icons but with backgrounds and with rich emotion and dimension. To better understand this look at the angels in this picture there is strong emotions displayed here.

Next week I hope to share some more of Giotto's art work and about our tea.

Baptism

Rejoicing today...our youngest son was baptised today. He just turned six last month. He had been asking about getting baptised for quite some time. We waited wanting to make sure he understand what he was doing and that it was his decision and not ours.

Well today he surprised us. Our church held a big event outdoors today at a local high school football stadium. There was a call for those that wanted to receive Jesus and those that had already done so but have not been baptised yet to profess their faith. During the pastors speech our youngest one stood up and announced boldly that he was going to be baptised today. We asked if he was sure and quickly asked him all the questions. He said he was going to get baptised....and then marched down the stadium steps. Tears filled his Dad's and my eyes as we quickly followed him. Luckily a friend in the audience loaned me her camera. Once I get the pictures I will post them. There were over two dozen others young and old demonstrating their act of obedience to the Lord in baptism.

What a special day is was today. Totally unexpected but isn't that how the Lord works at times!

Latin Update...

On my last post about Latin I vented about my frustrations with Latin. If I had trouble understanding it, how was I going to be able to teach it. This time I share with you an update on how we are doing.

Well....I haven't thrown the towel in yet. We're just about to finish four weeks of school. Hard to believe this... We have been averaging just two days a week of Latin. We are keeping the lessons short just 20 to 30 minutes. Small chunks of information at one time. They are understanding it and I AM TOO! Yeah!!

So far my kids have learned about why learning Latin is useful, different types of nouns, masculine and feminine nouns and over 10 vocabulary words and words that derive from them. In addition to all of this the kids have been learning the history of Rome too.

My biggest prayer is that we can maintain this momentum and enthusiasm about Latin. That we can recall things we have learned and to put it to use.

I will keep you posted again soon.

Our first Field Trip this School Year

This past Labor Day holiday weekend our family went on our first field trip, to the Getty Villa in Malibu, Ca. If you have never been there it is an absolute must. The museum is modeled after an Ancient Greek/Roman villa. The grounds, art and architecture transport you back in to an ancient Greco Roman world. The location of the museum's ocean views give the perfect ambiance of the Mediterranean sea in the distance.

With the holiday weekend they had plenty of family friendly activities for the kids to participate in. These were just perfect for our Ancient Rome unit that we are currently finishing up.

Here are some of the fun things my kids got to do there...

In a hands on kids room the kids had fun drawing on plastic jars that were modeled after Greek ceramic jars.

Other sections of the room had Greek tracing shapes for the kids to use and a "behind the silk" screen for acting out Greek Olympic Warrior scenes.

My kids had fun participating in a trading game. They were merchants in the Mediterranean area buying an exchanging supplies. Here the kids traded a piece of cloth for some olive oil that they were able to make.
I didn't know that cheesecloth is used to separate the olive pulp from the oil.

Crushing olives is hard work especially since they have pits.

Here is the finished olive oil. The oil at the top is what is referred to as virgin, it is without pulp. The oil at the bottom would be used for fuel for oil lamps at the time.

Next the kids got to grind spices. The spices were then added to the olive oil to be made into perfume.

The last trading station was designing a Roman coin. They had fun using a stylus to trace their creations onto a foil type coin.

Please keep in mind the kid exhibits change periodically but I am sure whatever it happens to be it will be an added bonus to any Ancient Mediterranean unit.

Another Tea with Cimabue

We had our artist tea today. The artist that we focused on was Cimabue. If you are interested in reading more about him please read my previous artist tea post found in the blog archives.

Cimabue's artworks would have a profound influence for other artists during the Early Renaissance. He helped raise the status bar that society had placed for artists at that time. Artists no longer came from low-income families but now higher incomes as well.

The crucifix as an icon dates back to the fourth century and has been used in art mediums for centuries. The Crucifix by Cimabue can still be seen today in the church of San Domenico located in Arezzo, Italy.

The resources that I used for this study of Cimabue were:

A Child's History of Art by: V.M. Hillyer

God and the History of Art by: Barry Stebbing