Looking back on another week of home-schooling in lockdown ...

Abstract Art Week emerged from three coinciding feelings:
- This magical book: The Dot, by Peter H.Reynolds, which we borrowed from a friend early in lockdown and immediately fell in love with.
- The realisation that in all these weeks of home schooling, we had never stopped to look at art for its own sake, and to begin to explore the wonder of art history.
- Bean's distinctive drawing technique, and her habit of drawing first, before looking at her creation and deriving meaning from it. I couldn't help feeling she'd find magic in all sorts of abstract paintings.
And so, in the week before half term, we took a break from narrative themes and looked at Abstract Art. This week, maths also fell to me, so we looked at 2d and 3d shapes and their properties, with mixed success!

As for The Dot - well, it became our reference manual, helping us accept the different outcomes of our own work, and when it came to exhibition time, the children were immediately comfortable with what to do, Feets better able to draw connections with her memory of past exhibitions than Bean.
Over the week, we looked at:

I could happily have spent the whole week with Kandinsky, but we moved on to ...

This project was very different to how I would teach art, and was one of the few times I drew on somebody else's activity plan, and the week was all the better for including a different activity style!



Exhibition day
We had such a stack of work by now that we decided to put on an exhibition. So, we commandeered the landing outside our flat, and Feets took on the role of curator with staggering confidence and vision. We designated areas for our different bodies of work and then hung them, each artist selecting the appropriate height for their work, and only minor rows along the way. We had written labels for some work, and Bean took naturally to inventing titles for all her creations. Finally, Mr Liam dropped by for snacks and a guided tour - himself a natural at filling all required roles, he was an enthusiastic and inspired customer.
I suggested inviting grandparents for a video tour, but my camera-shy children weren't keen. I was reluctant to draw the attention of our neighbours to it for fear of rubbing our energy in their faces, but this was unravelled by a lovely message from our next-door neighbour to the entire block, encouraging them to check out the top floor.
Our activity had inadvertently become a way to connect with others, and once again, the magic of this connection in the midst of the lockdown was probably the most memorable moment of all.

As I write this, I realise that all our artists were male. I feel another art week coming on ... Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe, Kathe Kollwitz, Frida Kahlo, Bridget Riley, Louise Bourgeois, Lubaina Himid, Yayoi Kusama ... okay, an Art Month!