Picture Study

New to our curriculum this year is picture study. I was listening to a podcast recently and the guest was Emily Kiser - creator of Picture Study Portfolios for Simply Charlotte Mason. I was so intrigued by her message and knew I wanted to give this a try (which is funny, because at first I almost skipped the podcast simply because I didn't think I wanted or needed to add anything else to what we were doing).

I texted a local friend who follows the Charlotte Mason method and asked if she did picture study with her kids. She does, and she had several artist portfolios that she offered for me to borrow. I randomly chose Vincent VanGogh, and introduced my girls to him and his art.

They are eating this up! The idea is to study one piece of art at a time, eventually covering 6 of the 8 pieces included in the portfolio. The first day I read the short bio about VanGogh, and displayed all 8 pieces for them to look at. A couple days later I chose one piece to have them study in detail. After several minutes, I asked them to narrate what they saw. Then we talked about the title, the dimensions of the original piece and I shared a few details about the piece.

It really doesn't take more than a few minutes and it's not something we do every day, but I know it will add a lot to our year. And I love the idea of focusing on one artist and studying several pieces of work by that artist before moving on to someone new.

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday