fine arts
Here are links to some local Art Museums:

San Jose Museum of Art
FREE to everyone, everyday.
Cantor Center for Visual Arts
Triton Museum
de Saisset Museum
My kids draw daily.  We haven't really done any formal art classes in our home school. We've used videos from the library, a book called Discovering Great Artists, surfed the web for artists and read about artists in library books. I especially liked the book "Linnea in Monet's Garden" Sister Wendy has some good books and videos on art also. Check your library. Here are some cool artists I've found on the web:
Masha is a local artist. Here are some beautiful animal paintings she did.
Layne and Peri Toth Sister comic book artists.
Akiane She's only 10 years old!
Kurt Wenner,street painter and more(I think his work is amazing)
Andy Goldsworthy-naturesculptor.
I always have art supplies around for them to use. This year we have done quite a bit of painting! We're still learning a lot about this. We're mostly pencil and paper artists and so we're trying to expand a bit. Hope to have some more links etc. for you soon. Here are some fun drawing activities we've done.   Here's a fun site for learning about art and artists that I found while surfing for still life paintings:  Enchanted learning.  What do you know about color theory?  Here's a site that will help you out, not only with color, it has other lesson plans and activities too.  Nice site! 

Ooh! This looks like fun! Art Edventures. You really just have to see it. Have fun!

Still life painting  I will be teaching a still life painting class this year!  A still life is good to work with because you can control the lighting, and it can't get up and walk away or move.  We will be using acrylic paints (each kid will get some to take home.)  Here are a few websites that I found that show some samples of still life painting. You can also find explanations of the art, and biographies of some of the artists if you're interested in reading and not just looking at the pictures. I'm sure you could find many sites besides these if you surf awhile.  I chose lots of  vase and flower pictures because that's what we will focus on for our first project.  After we've learned a few things we can move on to whatever we like.  We'll have lots of colors to work with so I also tried to choose some colorful paintings so that you could see how others have applied the color in their paintings.  Please pay attention to the placement of warm and cool colors in the compositions.   If you haven't had much experience with a color wheel or color mixing, you might want to click on the color theory link in the preceding section.  Here are some links:
Paul Seaton
Painting of Russia
Cleveland still life
Lisa Ernst
Elena Roche
Van Gogh

WebMuseum Here's a nice site with many famous artists and samples of their works.
Beginning Pottery! Just found this site. It has pictures illustrating how to make simple pots, including throwing on a wheel:) You can also find links to his work and others by clicking back to his main page. Enjoy.
    For music we've been learning the Recorder.  You can find lessons on Penny Gardner's website.  She has a book with lots of songs, lessons and a CD that we've been using.  Her website also has rhythm lessons that have been helpful.  My boys aren't always anxious to learn music  but slowly we're coming along.  We do it with friends and that makes it more fun.  Recorders are good first instruments.  They're inexpensive and you can learn to read music.  These two things will be useful if your child decides to try another instrument someday.  A recorder isn't a toy!  It's a real instrument.  I made a huge staff to put on the wall  and some big notes. I laminated them so they would last longer. The kids put them up to create measures and then we try to play them.  I clap the rhythm while the kids play, holding the note for the right beat.  When we started we just used the same note until we got used to  the number of beats for each note and practiced holding them for the right amount of time.  Penny explains exactly how to go about teaching each lesson.
There are a lot of young teens out there begging to play the drums (mine included). Here's a site with free drum lessons and a reasonably priced first drum set. My boys just bought it.
Okay, sonow they'retryingout the guitar! These are my own artists!
(Still need to download images etc.  KOO4 has some computer art that you can look at).
KOO1 | KOO2 | KOO3 | KOO4 |

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