Thursday, February 28, 2013

The works of Joseph Cornell



Born- December 24, 1903
Death - December 29, 1972
From New York City

Joseph Cornell is most famous for his collage/boxed creations.  He was a Surrealist.  He was a collector of special items.  If he went to a concert, he saved the program.  Had a favorite restaurant or picture, he saved it.  I'm seeing a pattern, oh yeah....my daughter does the same thing.  She collects little items from everywhere she goes.  I used to do the same thing.  He frequented thrift shops and collected beautiful items.  Cornell decided to start art boxes of these special objects.  He would visit book stores and collect special books and create beautiful works of art out of these also.  But his art did not stop there.  He also clipped together snippets of films to create what he felt were humorous works of art.  He became known as one of the first pop artists.

This is one of his most famous films.....Rose Hobart.  Lydia didn't see the "humor" in the film.  But she notice the changes.



Rose Hobart (1939) by Lost_Shangri_La_Horizon

Joseph Cornell's "Rose Hobart" (1936) is a short, 19 minute experimental film created by the artist Joseph Cornell, who cut and re-edited the Hollywood film "East of Borneo" into one of America's most famous surrealist short films. Cornell was fascinated by the star of East of Borneo, an actress named Rose Hobart, and named his short film after her. The piece consists of snippets from East of Borneo combined with shots from a documentary of an eclipse. When Cornell screened the film, he projected it through a piece of blue glass and slowed the speed of projection to that of a silent film. The original soundtrack is removed, and the film is accompanied instead by "Forte Allegre" and "Belem Bayonne", two songs from Nestor Amaral's "Holiday in Brazil," a record that Cornell had found at a junk shop. 

In 2001, Rose Hobart was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Sites to visit:

Joseph Cornell Box


Some more of his artworks:


 This definitely looks like a Lydia.

Some of his re-created books....

I was going to take Lydia thrift shopping, but to be honest didn't have a lot of extra time this week.  So we will save that project for next year.  One of Joseph Cornell's famous "boxed" art pieces was about Lauren Bacall.  
So we decided to do a Justin Beiber Box.  I printed several pictures of him, including his favorite foods.  (Now I call that love that I spent precious time searching the internet for Justin Beiber likes and dislikes...lol)  I turned her lose with an empty cereal box after I cut it for her.




 This was her finish project....Turned out pretty cute.


We kind of felt like Joseph Cornell was one of the original scrapbookers.  He could've easily run a Smash Club!!  We are helping to start one of these clubs in our homeschool group!  We are very excited and already been working on our book.

Next artist is......Louise Bourgeois

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Caty School

Our theme this week was Fire Engines, Stranger Safety and the color Red.

We watched and learned the Color song for red:

These are the books we read on 'Red'.
Some of our Fire books....
 She really wasn't excited about our Fire Week.  I thought she would like it, but she hasn't so far.  But this fire truck project turned it around.
 Some more of the movies we watched this week....
We played Alphabet UNO...a favorite game of Caty right now.
 Our Hooked on Phonics this week was Letters C & D and a review of Letters A, B, C, D.  She is really loving the songs.
Pretending to be a Letter C.
 Lydia had to get in on this one.
Some alphabet sheets she really likes doing with bingo daubers....of course our choice of color was Red.  I cannot find the exact link now...so this is the blog they are from:

Photobucket
Caty loves these!!!

Monday, February 25, 2013

What we are up to this week....


We have a lot of club events this week, and our bi-weekly art class.  Actually we have 3 clubs and art class tomorrow.  A field trip to the Art Museum on Tuesday morning.  Joey and Lydia start back to 4H this week.  Actually Lydia is still a Cloverbud for another two years....shhhhhh....don't tell her.  She's in denial that she can't show a project yet.  So she is collecting her art projects to enter in the fair anyway.  Of course we have the regular dance/gymnastics classes.  Our Special Olympics Homecoming is this Friday, and Lydia is going to a Scrapbooking Party that a friend of ours is hosting this upcoming weekend.

Some where we have to do schoolwork....

Joey:
Math- I am making a slight adjustment in Joey's math.  He will do 2-3 assignments a week and then he will be working on his computer curriculum.
Computer- He is creating a powerpoint slide for a 4H project.  This will take a couple weeks.
Science - He is starting Astronomy and Space from Journey Through Learning.  Watch for the upcoming review
History/Social Studies - Knights and Castles from Journey through Learning.
Handwriting - Will continue through cursive
Grammar - Finish up talking about Subjects & Predicates and work on Sentence Fragments.  He and Brayden are using Essentials in Writing (watch for the upcoming review)
Reading - He will be starting back working on Book Adventure a couple times a week to strengthen his reading comprehension skills.  He's finally remembering what he is reading.

Brayden:
Math- Continue working in Multiplication
Science - Astronomy and Space from Journey through Learning
History - early American history using Schoolexpress
Grammar - Finish up talking about Subjects & Predicates and work on Sentence Fragments (Same as Joey)
Reading - He will also be using the Book Adventure program like Joey is.

Lydia:
Math- Keep working on addition in Touch Point Math 2nd grade and she will also be working on their Time program
Science - The Earth lapbook from Journey Through Learning.
Reading- McGuffey and a couple site word games
History- The first forms of writing
Geography words- continent, continental divide
Art- clay art....and at home she'll be working on giving a texture look to paint
Phonics - ABeka Letters and Sounds
Spelling - All About Spelling Lesson 4
Bible - Chapter 4 - The Tower of Babel

Caty:
Math - She is still working on her pattern unit
Hooked on Phonics- We didn't finish our sound review of A-D, so we are going to do that this week.
Science- We will be doing some growing with carrot tops (an Evan Moore project)
Art- Same as Lydia
**Practicing our phone number
**Speech will be initial and middle S sounds.

Everyone have a wonderful week!!!

Friday, February 22, 2013

Our week in Review----Week 38




Joey finished up his math unit on estimating.  Math is definitely not his strong point and I am not sure how to keep going with him.  He is in 6th grade and no where near ready to handle pre-algebra even.  In fact, he forgets steps in simple addition problems.  I know it frustrates him also.  


We started reading about what happened in the Ohio Country during the Revolutionary War.  

He worked hard on separating subjects and predicates in his grammar.  Joey finished his George Washington Book.  We both found out some great facts about this hero for Adventure Club.  

In Science he finished up his unit on plants and spores.  We had a failed science experiment, so we re-started our experiment this morning.  Turns out the furnace definitely keeps our house too dry in the winter for mold.  So we had to create a green house effect using gallon bags this morning.  He dissected a seed to discover the seed coat.  And then he is going to start growing them in the little "greenhouse" now.

He put the beans in water to soak overnight to make them more easy to dissect.

 I actually cut the bean apart.  I couldn't allow him to do it.
 Our other piece of bread dried out horribly.  So we put the new slice in a gallon baggie to create a "greenhouse" effect.
 He also planted the remaining beans to see what would happen.

Even through whining, crying and tantrums....he got his work done.

Brayden sat with me to do his schoolwork everyday.  He finished up learning about bees today.  I am trying to get the Bee movie cartoon for us to watch with him.  We used to have it, but I can't find it.  He finished reading Bad Kitty.  He "restarted" multiplication.  It's refresher from when he regressed in some skills last fall.  Hopefully we'll get back to where he needs to be pretty quick.

Caty had a good week.  We worked on Hooked on Phonics and these Letter finds from Living Life Intentionally.  She loves using the Bingo markers.  

She worked on a unit on Fire trucks and fireman.  I found this wooden model at the store, and she really liked it.
She did not like painting with pencil erasers to do dot art.  It was rather comical...have you noticed this weeks favorite shirt...lol.
Practicing speech sounds playing Go Fish with a game from Speech Therapy Ideas.
Lydia did really well.  She is working on her Math in Touch Point Math.  She is actually begging to do the software side of the program.  It is definitely a new approach to math.  She got very frustrated...as did I...trying to make the Egyptian Beaded Collar today.  We both gave up, and agreed that neither of us are Egyptian Princesses.  So we wore fancy necklaces and watched a movie instead...lol.

Her artist study this week was Joseph Cornell...watch for the upcoming post.  He is famous for collage boxes.  She decided to do a collage box for Justin Bieber.  Go figure.
For her smash journal, she did a page on science toys she saw in a catalog.  Our Smash Club starts Monday and she is super excited!!!

We watched this video on Ancient Mesopotamia to help tie in with her studies in Story of the World V. 1.  And Joey was bummed that our Liberty Kids episodes were erased, so I pulled this oldie but goodie off the shelf to play one morning.

We went to the Toledo Symphony - Music Around America concert.  It was wonderful.
And we looked at some beautiful new art on our way in.  This was her favorite.  Part of the Chemo exhibit.  All art is done by cancer patients at the Hospital.  This was done by a teenager.  Lydia loved the colors and the blending.
Killing time waiting for Caty's dance class to finish.  She's playing Minecraft on her iPad.
She just started All About Spelling 1.  For letters, we are using these plastic ones, instead of the little letters that come with it.  She likes these better.  She did really well with alphabetizing this week!

We had a pretty good week at school.  You can tell because our house is a wreck!  I was so tired after all the schoolwork, and basic cleanup that I didn't do a lot of cleaning.  It was also a bit crazy flipping between all 4 kids.  Brayden regressed in working in independently.  He will only do some work by himself, and even work he can do by himself he insists I need to "help" him with.  Which really just means he wants me to read directions to him. We'll work past this "bump", smooth it over and get ready for our next "bump".  We know it's just ahead...lol.

I hope everyone had a wonderful week!!!  Linking up with other homeschool families at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.