Books! Books! Books!

I love buying books for my boys. I have a long list of books I'd like to purchase from a variety of subjects...but this shopping spree was an effort to help us with our study of Fine Arts.

For Art this year, I am using How to Teach Art to Children published by Evan-Moor. The first few lessons have been about Line - recognizing and drawing vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines in varying widths thick, thin and dotted. After each lesson, we've looked around our house to find the different lines and follow that up by looking at examples of artwork through our borrowed library books Museum ABC, Museum Shapes and Museum 123 (all published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art). I love these books because they are appropriate for ANY age - everyone in our family can look at these books and come away a little more knowledgeable. They were number one on my shopping list and I'm sure the other patrons of the library will be thankful that I'm not holding those copies hostage any longer.

Can You Find It? is a search and find book using art work. Elijah and Luke love these types of books, so that was a extra purchase. It's turn out to be a treasure as well.

I am planning to study a different artist each month. I found Discovering Great Artists many months back, but wasn't sure about it. Then I happened upon a blogging mom who is using it with her little ones and I loved the projects her children were doing. Check out this Van Gogh project that finally sold me. Maybe it's just because I love sunflowers...

The rest of the stack is for Music. Both Elijah and Luke will be taking piano lesson together with Miss June. They will focus on the piano as the main instrument, but will try a variety of rhythm instruments and music "play." I am hoping to teach them about the different sections of the orchestra and listen to a variety of classical musicians. Again, I've borrowed these Classical Kids CDs from our library and love them. We occasionally watch Little Einsteins on TV and the first time I put in one of the new CDs, Elijah said, "Hey, I like this music...it's from Little Einsteins!" He then proceeded to "fly" in his rocket around the house, joined within seconds by his brothers, humming along with the music.

This treasures below are a stack of well loved books I picked at my local library sale. My favorite of the bunch is Jamberry. I love the rollicking flow of the words about a little boy and a bear picking berries for jam...

"One berry

Two berry

Pick me a blueberry...

Trainberry

Trackberry

Clickety-clackberry...

Raspberry

Jazzberry

Razzamatazzberry

Berryband

Merryband

Jamming in Berryland..."

Of course, you can't beat classics like Madeline and Babar, too! My only problem now...my only problem always is...I NEED MORE BOOK SHELVES!