Week 17 Day 5

Book choices for today:

Sharing with Renoir   Julie Merberg
Smart About Art: Pierre-Auguste Renoir   True Kelley
Renoir and the Boy with the Long Hair   Wendy Wax
Mary Cassatt: Family Pictures   Jane O’Connor
Suzette and the Puppy   Joan Sweeney
It Takes a Village   Jane Fletcher
Over in the Grasslands   Anna Wilson

Art: (first circle)

Need for lesson – Renoir Art set and Mary Cassatt Art set

Art 12
We have talked about the artist Monet. He was an Impressionist artist. Two other Impressionist artists were Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Mary Cassatt. Renoir was born in France just like Monet was. Monet was one year older than Renoir. He started painting in a porcelain factory where he painted fine china. When he began to paint pictures his favorite subjects to paint were people. He painted children, flowers, and beautiful women. He also did some paintings of beaches, cliffs, forest, and mountain scenes.
Mary Cassatt was a little younger than both Monet and Renoir. She was born in North America, not Europe like the Monet and Renoir. She traveled to Europe when she was a little girl and moved there when she was older. She moved there to study art and painting. Cassatt painted many pictures of mothers and children together. Let’s look at some of their paintings.

Additional Works:

Renoir and Cassatt Watercolor Painting (from Art Masterpieces to Color)

Geography: (Second Circle)

Need for Lesson – Pictures of deserts in Africa: Sahara, Namib, and Kalahari. A picture of a camel and a dromedary. A biome map of Africa. If you decide to have children make a biome map of Africa, have these materials ready as well. You can just color the different areas or use things like sand, glitter, or tissue paper to define areas.

Geography 29 (B)

We have been talking about the continent of Africa and we also read about deserts recently. The continent of Africa has many deserts areas. One of them is the largest desert in the world, called the Sahara Desert. There is one named Namib and another one is called the Kalahari desert. (Show desert pictures). Many people live in the Sahara desert area. Some of the animals found in this desert include foxes, mongoose, hyenas, and gazelles. Some animals that live in the Kalahari desert are meerkats, cheetahs, leopards, and black maned lions.

Another desert animal is a dromedary. What is a dromedary? Let’s look at these two pictures (camel and dromedary). What do you notice that is different about them? How are they similar? It is the one hump dromedary that is commonly seen in the deserts of Africa. The two humped camel is mostly seen in Asia.

Africa has deserts, mountains, forest, and grasslands biomes areas. We can make a map showing the different areas of Africa. Let’s look at them. (After discussing map, demonstrate how a biome map can be made.)

This is a coloring page of the biome map of Africa. It is a basic one. Some older children like to also add rivers to it. The Montessori Africa Biome Map can be found on many websites selling Montessori geography materials.

You can make an outline of the map on a poster board and use various materials such as sand, tissue paper, or paint and the children can make more of a physical type of map defining the biomes of Africa.

Additional Works:

African Village – These are pictures the children can color and glue to make a village scene. They are from the book “Patterns for World Cultures”.
Dromedary Poking – Trace the outline of the dromedary and make it a pin-poking work.