A Week of Five in a Row: Day Three

Sorry for the delay in our continuing coverage of our week with Lentil and Five in a Row.  Lyme Disease strikes again.  I woke up the last couple of days feeling like I'd been hit by a truck, despite the bucketload of antibiotics in my system, and so while we finished up day three on time, I didn't get around to posting it until, well, now.

On day three we covered one of my favorite subjects- art!  I love art.  I could study art exclusively all year long and be happy as a clam.  Syd likes it too, but more the creating of it, less so the admiring of other people's pieces.  Luckily, she got to make plenty of her own for this project.

If you've read Lentil, or really any book by Robert McCloskey, you'll know that he did some really nifty charcoal drawings, and that was what we focused on.  First, we looked through the book and examined the drawings, talking specifically about the different ways he used the charcoal, whether smudging or cross-hatching, to create shadow and texture.

Then it was time for Sydney to try making a few drawings of her own.  She was very excited to get started with a new medium, because really, there are only so many things you can do with crayons.  I found a soft charcoal pencil for her to use, because while soft charcoal is messier than the harder stuff, it also provides more scope for smearing and smudging.

Naturally, we went onto Pandora while she worked and found a channel with lots of good harmonica and blues music, as music was our secondary focus of our day's art study, and who doesn't like listening to old school blues?

One of our cats, Sebastian, decided to get in on the fun and critique Sydney's masterpieces.

You can see the nice writing table we converted for Sydney to work at this year.  It fits her perfectly, and sits nicely next to the window, where we have a collection of random beautiful things.

My favorite of Sydney's finished drawings was her train, which she named the "Elbow" for reasons known only to her.  She did a decent job trying to spell it, though.

And so we spent a nice afternoon, listening to great music while Sydney made countless charcoal drawings and I relaxed and read a book.