23 August, 2006

Cafe Terrace


We just started school this week. Picture Study got set aside for the most part since early in 2004, so our younger two boys needed a reminder of how this works! We always have several prints displayed around our home, on various easels or shelves, but I needed to officially reintroduce active picture study again. Today, I displayed our copy of Cafe Terrace by Vincent Van Gogh for just a few minutes and told them to pay attention to detail. Then I turned the print over (hiding it) and asked them tell me everything they could about it. I had them draw their own copies of Cafe Terrace. They really got into it!

Our younger two boys are 11 and 13, btw. They even brought up how we like cafes as opposed to fast food. I asked why. 11 yo's answers were funny, thing such as fast food not being healthy and that cafes are fancy (huh? Nah, they are just very cool) but then he realized the true answer~that we prefer cafes because of the friends we have meet us there and the time spent lingering with them. They also talked about the atmosphere being more conducive (no, they did not use that word) to talking with friends: warmer and softer lighting and color pallettes. Most of the time, they have good music playing in the background.

We have also made Wednesdays our Plutarch days. On this day, our older two kiddos aged 15 (daughter) and 17.5 (son) each have a Worldviews class (Year 1 and year 3) they get to take with other homeschoolers, and this provides the perfect time for the younger two to focus together on "Nobler things," as Plutarch or Goethe would say. Even better, the boys and I thought of Philipians 4:8-12 and turned to it after our Plutarch reading of the day.

Vocubulary words from today:
trifles (which our youngest said he had just learned in his small group at church)
servile
Sophist


This was one of those really good hs days.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kim,

I enjoyed hearing about what you did with the picture study, especially that it was a Van Gogh. I just learned this past weekend that he only painted for 8 years.

I need to sit down with my kids and do this, too. Thanks for the example!

Monica

Anonymous said...

I like your ideas of picture study and shall be incorporating them into our own schooling! Lovely blog! I'll be back again and again!

Mama Squirrel said...

Your kids are probably too old to really enjoy this, but the picture book Katie and the Sunflowers has a funny part about the Cafe Terrace painting.