In a Large Room Retreat

Picture Study notes from “In a Large Room” Retreat

/ thepantrybook / Leave a comment

This post is part of a series on the “In a Large Room” Retreat

I asked my friend from California, Cristina, to give the Picture Study talk. Here are her notes, slightly edited for publication.

IMG_2750
If you know a little bit about Charlotte Mason, one of the highlights of her educational philosophy is “spreading a feast of ideas” before the child. A feast in that it’s a diverse range of subjects verses just “3 R’s” – reading, writing and arithmetic.

Part of the feast she suggests is something called Picture Study.

When I first was reading about Charlotte Mason five or so years ago and trying to wrap my mind around the whole thing, Picture Study stood out as something new, something exciting, but also slightly intimidating. My husband would ask,  “How is this different than just looking at pretty picture?”.

1) So first I’d like to talk about WHY picture study? 2)Then I’d like to share five brief directives on HOW to do Picture Study with your students and even with yourself, because if it is good for our children, certainly there is the same growth we can gain from it. 3)Then we’ll do a Picture Study together, where you get to be the student.

The WHY . . .

1) Charlotte Mason talks about something called the “treasure chest of the mind” — storing up beautiful images for us to recall as we grow, as we consider. Certainly we are surrounded by images everyday and unfortunately now it’s really hard to keep the worst kinds out of our minds. By showing our children some of the most beautiful and celebrated images, whether it be paintings, illustrations or 3D sculpture, we are teaching them what is truly beautiful,  à la Phillipians 4:8.

2) This also develops the habit of attention. Sir Isaac Newton said “If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent.” Charlotte Mason says that after teaching obedience to our children, attention is one of the most valuable habits for all of education we can train our children in.

3) Finally, Picture Study develops the skill of narration. You can’t hear about Charlotte Mason and also not know that narration is the means of training our children how to tell back, in their owns words, really anything: a portion from a book they read, a direction you gave them, a movie they saw. They use the storehouse of their own vocabulary having internalized the idea (making it thier own) then telling back in their own words what they have “gathered.” In telling back what we see from the picture, the children (or ourselves) have not only recreated that image in our head for life but gaining adjectives, adverbs, even telling a story in sequence describing words into our mouths. The images play out as words on a page, even as we internalize great classic books so we can do with great paintings.

Ok- so HOW do we do it?

1) Your most important job as the teacher is selecting the images (the paintings). You want to discriminate, using the best, the best place to start is the masters, but eventually as you get the hang of it you’ll be able to even sort through more contemporary work.  You can do picture study really anytime, but as you consider what picture you will use, you might consider whether you want to…
A) study one artist at a time (artist study)
B) study a subject (Sunday school)
C) maybe you want to look at picture from a time period you are studying, either by when it was painted or the subject matter that is presented (i.e. paintings of Middle Ages)

2) As the parent/teacher your role after choosing the pictures is to secure the time and place of looking at these pictures and as they are being studied, carefully choosing questions that might lead the eyes of the children to parts of the image that they might be missing. Remember the goal is for them to internalize it, develop their ideas about it. Don’t ask if they like it or don’t like it.

3) Once it’s been studied a few minutes, take the picture away and challenge the student to narrate back all he remembers. If there is more than one student, ask the youngest to start then move to the older and challenge to bring out details not already mentioned by the younger child.

4) Leave the painting up to enjoy in the home.

5) Try to get to a museum to see the actual work of art or practice picture study with what you see there.

Dry Brush Watercolor Tips

/ thepantrybook / Leave a comment

This post is part of a series on the “In a Large Room” Retreat

I gave a brief demonstration of the Dry Brush Technique as used for nature notebooking in a Charlotte Mason education (or just for a rich and full life of any person, not necessarily a student).

Here are the tips I shared:

  • Use very little water: avoid puddling in your paints and have a paper towel or cloth nearby to blot excess water from your brush.
  • Keep a lovely point on your brush and only gently stroke your paintbrush in one direction (no scrubbing back-and-forth with the brush).
  • Paint exactly what you see: life-sized, include damaged parts, just like a colored photograph of your specimen.
  • Place your specimen on the opposite page in your notebook to give it a white background and make the shadow easier to see.
  • Never use the green in a store-bought palette; always mix your own from yellow and cyan.
  • Test your color on a scrap of watercolor paper to make sure you have the right color.
  • Do not sketch an outline with a pencil or paint. Instead, paint a solid undercoat (filled-in, not an outline). Painting or drawing an outline makes a harsh edge which does not look realistic.
  • After the undercoat is dry (which shouldn’t take more than a few seconds because you used very little water), then go back and add in all the details like veins, shadows, etc..
  • It’s not really about art, it’s about building skills of observation and appreciation for God’s creation.
  • It can be helpful to make a map of your watercolor palette showing each color full strength all the way to the palest version when diluted with water (see photo below).

P1060345

 

 

 

IMG_2762 IMG_2764

 

A Retreat for Moms

/ thepantrybook / 8 Comments

So, I had this crazy idea to host a retreat for homeschooling moms. Then I dismissed it because: 1. I have literally no experience homeschooling (we just started), 2. I have no time for something like this (I have three kids, two in diapers and two non-walkers – my plate is really full, you know?), and 3. well, it just seemed like a crazy idea. But, the idea didn’t go away, and I thought it might be coming from the Holy Spirit. Well, I won’t say no to God!!! My friend was coming to visit for a few days from California and she said she would be blessed by it, so I picked a day while she was going to be here. I figured nobody else would want to come, and if it ended up just being the two of us, it would still be great.

I decided to go for it just two weeks before the actual event. Yikes! I figured out a schedule and sent out invitations via evite. Many moms said they were really interested but they weren’t available on that particular day.

Yesterday, I had TWELVE! delightful ladies (and about 14 kids!) in my home for a whole day of encouragement and discussion of Charlotte Mason’s methods. It was really really wonderful!

Here’s our schedule:

IMG_2730

Here are some snippets of our retreat:

I decorated with some quotes on the walls for inspiration. And Adele helped. =)

IMG_2740

IMG_2737

IMG_2736 IMG_2739 IMG_2734 IMG_2738 IMG_2735

I was up until 1am the night before – getting everything ready. I know there is no way the books and name tags would have looked this good if Cristina hadn’t been here to help me [do most of the work]. Thank you so much, Cristina!!!

IMG_2760

Lunch!

IMG_2763 IMG_2762 IMG_2761 IMG_2764

IMG_2750

One of my goals for the retreat was for each attendee to begin keeping her own notebooks (commonplace book, Book of Centuries, and nature notebook at least). Thus, I thought a personalized commonplace book would be the perfect conference gift.

IMG_2731

By the way, I didn’t make mine gold because I wanted mine to be different. I started with mine for practice and the gold ink was extremely difficult to write with on this particular paper, so I switched for the others. I used the gold on the name tags too, but if I did it again, I’d use black because the gold was too fussy. IMG_2749

A couple of moms arrived late and we took longer than I anticipated on the garden tour, so the nature painting was a bit rushed. I had everything set up beforehand, but I think I should have given one hour for the painting part of the day.

A couple of families stayed for dinner (wood-fired pizza) and we had some really great fellowship.

Today, I was happy to have a quiet day at home, but I was also really sad that the retreat was over. Adele asked me if we could have another retreat in a couple of weeks. I said no, but maybe next year. So, you heard it here first – this was the First (of perhaps many) ANNUAL In a Large Room Retreat.

Finally, here are just some practical things in case others are contemplating doing the same thing.

  • I spent a lot of money on babysitting. I paid one teenager $80 and a second teenager $45 (he only stayed half the day), for a grand total of $125. But we had more little people than adults and I know that most of the attendees would not have been able to attend if we hadn’t had babysitting. Worth it IMHO.
  • I spent $60 on an hour of mentoring with Nancy Kelly. I thought it might be a waste because I didn’t think she would be able to help me much with only a week before the retreat, but she was REALLY helpful!!
  • I paid $53 for the notebooks, plus the time to paint and calligraphy the lettering (I already had all the paint and ink).
  • I paid about $30 for additional watercolor supplies because I knew that most people didn’t already have their own. In fact, I wish I had bought a few more paint sets and waterbrushes because people still had to share.
  • We had kids standing at the long desk in the schooling room and moms and kids crowded around the dining room table (extended with three leaves), but I wish I had set up a folding table in the schooling room to give people a bit more space for nature notebook painting.
  • I wanted to make my own croissants for lunch, but I just didn’t have the time, so those came from the store.

I’ll be posting some notes from the individual talks over the next couple of days for those of you who weren’t able to attend. You can find them all HERE.