Art – Homespun Homeschool

American Flag Tin Whistle Case

October 31, 2016 by Thena Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago my toddler got ahold of our classroom American flag, and of course, broke it. I had been planning to make my 1st grader a nifty tin whistle case anyway, and then I had the bright idea: make the flag into the whistle case! I held the flag up to the whistle, and it was the perfect size fabric 🙂

I realized that the flag fabric alone wouldn’t be sturdy enough to make a proper case. Since my sewing skills leave much to be desired, I went for the most basic method: I got a piece of felt from the craft store, which happened to be almost exactly the same size as the flag – yay!

I pinned the flag onto the felt, then sewed the two pieces of fabric together freehand (honestly, I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of getting my sewing machine out). I then cut the one long side of the fabric that I had left unpinned, so that it lined up with the flag.

Once that was done, I literally just placed the whistle in the rectangle so that the length of the whistle and the length of the fabric almost perfectly lined up. I then folded the fabric over it, to create a pocket for the whistle to slip into. Then, with the whistle still inserted, I rolled the fabric up and pinned down the previously-sewn seam where the fabric ended. I freehand-stitched the seam to the rolled up fabric, and when I got to the bottom of the case, I simply sewed the end shut.

Whala! A cute tin whistle case for about $1.50 – and patriotic too!

Alexander Calder-Style Mobile

October 9, 2016 by Thena Leave a Comment

For our Homespun Art projects I try to use various sources, so that we get exposed to a broad range of approaches. For this project, we used the book 9 Famous Artists Your Children Will Love.

Because we are studying abstract art in Classical Conversations right now, I tried to find an abstract artist who brought another dimension to what we’ve already studied. Because of the 3-D nature of mobiles, this project was perfect! First we read about the artist, then we skipped to the back of the book to the section with art projects for kids, based on each artist. I lucked out on this project, because I already had a mobile frame out in the garage, which I’d used to hang photos over my son’s cradle when he was a baby.

We went online and looked at pictures of Alexander Calder’s mobiles, then talked about the shapes, patterns and the sense of balance he used in his art. We then decided which colors and shapes we wanted, and set to cutting them out of our construction paper. Whala! A study of an abstract artist made fun!