Review of Aquarelle Monet

Our summer has been amazing and we are really enjoying relaxing and being laid back more than we ever have before. Even though it is summer, we still like to incorporate what I call fun learning especially anything to do with art. Today's review falls into that category perfectly. We were sent the Aquarelle Monet set from Timberdoodle to review. We thought it was the perfect way to pass a hot summer day!

The Aquarelle Monet set includes the following items:

• three pictures on thick card stock with beautiful landscape scenes from Monet's line of water lillies
• washable liquid watercolor paints
• a standard pipette plus a sturdy dropper (love that Timberdoodle added the sturdy dropper because they felt the one included did not hold up well - I agree!)
• paint palette
• a double ended paintbrush
• a color mixing guide

I found myself really interested in the name when I first saw this set and loved the fact that it included landscape scences from Monet's line of water lillies.  Aquarelle is a style of painting using thin, typically transparent, watercolors.  I explained that to my daughter before beginning the fun. 

Getting started is really simple and easy - all you need is water!  The color mixing guide makes obtaining the color you want even easier.  Sarah really enjoyed mixing her own colors using the guide and playing around with her own combinations.  

The pictures have a wax lining that remains clear as you paint over them giving such a fantastic dimension to your painting and really making it easy to make a great water color painting. 

 

Here are some of our finished projects.  We experimented with adding just a little water to the picture after we finished and liked the effect it left too.  It was so fun to play around with - we had a blast making it our own.  

I didn't realize before hand that many of Claude Monet's final and most famous pieces feature the water lilies in Giverny. So, not only was this a fun activity it sparked our interest into finding more about the artist as well. 

Aquarelle Monet is recommended for ages 8 and up but with a parent's help in mixing the colors I think it would be okay to use with younger children.  The great part is the paints are easily washable because we dripped some ourselves as we were mixing and had no problems at all with clean up.  We would highly recommend this fun activity! This set currently sells for $28.50 and can be purchased here.

This set is also a part of Timberdoodle's 4th Grade 2016 Curriculum Kit.

**I received a free copy of this product through Timberdoodle in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC Regulations.

Review of Extreme Dot to Dots: Spectacular Places

Raise your hand if you love dot to dot pictures! If so, I have a fantastic resource for you. Only thing though - this one is extreme and I do mean extreme! We were sent Extreme Dot-to-Dots: Spectacular Places from Timberdoodle to review and we have all had a blast trying our hand at it.

One of the things I loved most were the famous places and facts included. Part of the fun was looking at the fact and dots and trying to guess what the place was before finishing.

Now, these are not for young children by any means. The pictures are complex and the numbers head into the thousands so these are not for the faint of heart but these are great if you are looking for a fun challenge. Each of the 42 different puzzles contains a minimum of 1200 dots!  I even had to pull out the magnifying glass which really helped me see those tiny numbers. The only part I found a little extra tedious were numbers in a very light font color. I think the light color meant you could skip those numbers without effecting the picture too much but I found it easier to follow the sequence of numbers. Here you can see the clue and the picture about half way through. Can you guess the place?

If you just cannot figure out what the place is, there is a finished answer key in the back of the book to make it easier.

Some of the places you will visit include The Great Wall of China, The Great Sphinx (in case you couldn't tell :), The Grand Canyon, The Eiffel Tower, The Panama Canal, and so many more!

All of the pages are perforated which makes it easier for the whole family to enjoy at once. Stephen and Sarah are both still working on their final projects but they love them too! They have really enjoyed trying their hand at these during our hot summer days.  These would also make a great resource to kick off a history study or as you finish one. This book currently sells for $12.50 and can be purchased here. We think that is a great price for a combination of history and art!

This book is also a part of Timberdoodle's Eighth Grade 2016 Curriculum Kit.

**I received a free copy of this product through Timberdoodle in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC Regulations.

Review of NotebookingPages.com

To aid in our summer studies of focusing on God's Word, we have been taking advantage of the Lifetime Membership from NotebookingPages.com.

If you are unfamiliar with what notebooking actually is, think scrapbooking for school subjects. It's a fun way for students to make subjects come to life. Students journal and draw about what they have learned and every page shows each student's own unique personality. There is no right or wrong way to notebook which is the beauty of this system. They offer pages that cater to students who may prefer to draw and students who prefer to write. There are also options available for a mix of the two.

NotebookingPages.com offers 1000's of pages to download and print in Bible/Character, Alphabet, Famous People, Fine Arts, Geography, History, Holidays, Language Arts, and Science/Nature. They also offer basic lined notebooking pages that can be used with any subject.

So far we have have just touched the surface on the pages available with this membership. The most fantastic part is your membership never expires so you can take all the time you need to complete your projects! You also gain free access to any future updates that may occur with your lifetime membership.

For our homeschool, we focused on the Bible notebooking pages. This set takes you through the Old Testament and New Testament from Creation to John's Vision on the island of Patmos. It comes in a zip file and once unzipped it contains 54 files of PDF printables. This set alone has over 500 different pages to choose from!

I used this set with my daughter, Sarah, who is 12. We used the Bible notebooking categories as our devotion point each day. We began by researching the Bible verse or verses then added our own drawings or timeline and journaling information. Some days, we added a paraphrase with our thoughts and some days we simple copied the verse from the Bible but it has been a great time to spend with each other and growing in God's Word.

One of the files included an overview of every page in the set which made it so much simpler to pick and choose which pages we wanted to work with. Below is just a small sample of what is available.

We hole punched the pages and inserted them inside this small 3 ring flexible binder.  You could also add them to the binder with a clear front and decorate with your own binder cover. 

The Table of Contents page included was great to keep us on track.  You could also number your pages to correspond with the Table of Contents if you wish to make pages easier to look back on.

Here are just a few of the Bible notebooking pages that we completed.

Sarah enjoyed this way of working through the Bible. She is very creative and loves to draw so this was a perfect fit for her. There are also pages available with illustrations for those who would rather just narrate what they have learned as well as a combination of both.

I love to do special activities on holidays so I know the holiday section will come in handy for us too. There are pages for most of the traditional holidays. Here is a sample of just one of the pages offered for the fourth of July.

Next school year, we will be focusing a lot of other countries and geography so I have already begun to explore and print some of the pages in that section for next year too. The geography notebooking pages include maps, country pages, and more.

NotebookingPages.com offers lots of free pages too. You can sign up for a free sampler to see if this unique system will work for your family. I love that there are so many options in so many subjects so I don't have to take the time to search the internet for each individual page. When you are finished with your pages, you will have a real treasure on your hands written and designed by your student.

Find out more about NotebookingPages.com on Facebook and Twitter.

Review of 20 Ways to Draw A Bike

I have another fun activity to share with you today and it's perfect for summer break too! My daughter has been loving sketching in her new book, 20 Ways to Draw a Bike from Timberdoodle. She loves to draw and doodle and this book provides over 900 drawings for her to work with. The book contains 45 themes of images to draw including bikes, hot air balloons, strollers, trucks, and so many more!

20 Ways to Draw a Bike comes in a 96 page sturdy paperback binding with thick card stock covers. There are no step by step how to instructions. The images vary in range from simplistic to more complicated but each theme offers plenty of variety for all levels. Most images are black line sketches with some color images scattered throughout the book. It is recommended for ages 11+ and grades 6 and up. Timberdoodle sells it for $18.99. 

There are many ways you could use 20 Ways to Draw a Bike - traveling, addition to art curriculum, on the road schooling, summer enrichment, fun activity for parents and children to do together, etc.

We're headed to Alaska this summer and it will definitely be packed in our travel bag. It is great for road trips and traveling because you can draw your sketches right in the book. The only accessory needed is your favorite drawing tool. 

This book is perfect for Sarah, my little artist!  She loves to draw and is so creative.  Can you tell which image is hers below?  It was hard for me to pick out! 

Artist and author, James Gulliver Hancock, designed this book with the thought in mind that everyone should be drawing the things they see around them and use everyday. He has also stated that the best way to learn to draw is to draw! 20 Ways to Draw a Bike will give you plenty of opportunities to put that theory into practice.

**I received a free copy of this product through Timberdoodle in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC Regulations.

Review of Kwik Stix #KwikStix

My daughter is a DIY queen! She is so creative, artistic, and is always searching out do it yourself projects to complete. Lately, she has been using the Kwik Stix 12 pk from The Pencil Grip, Inc. to create her projects and I am loving the no mess kids art supplies!

Kwik Stix are available in several different sizes and styles. They are an amazing solid tempera paint stick that really does dry in 90 seconds! We even found that depending on the surface, the drying time can be even quick than 90 seconds.

Sarah said the stick had the feel of a typical glue stick and the paint texture reminded her of lipstick. She painted this egg which had a wood surface. The drying time is right on and we tested it out (see video). On the finished project, the colors were vibrant as well.

She also used the paint sticks to add color to some fun task sticks she made out of plain wooden craft sticks.

Sarah and I also make a Scripture Art Journal weekly so I wanted to give them a try too. I used them for my verse on normal sketch pad paper. 

As you can see below, when I've used markers in the past, they actually bled through the paper.The Kwik Stix had no bleeding through at all! I also colored over the colors to test out how they would work. I thought the top color showed up beautifully even when it was a lighter color than the bottom color. There was also no mixing of colors on the paint stick! It remained clean and in tact. 

 

Using a marker

Using Kwik Stix

If you are sick of unwashed paint brushes or paint splattered in your sink when the brushes are washed you must give these a try!  No smocks, no water, not even paint brushes are needed to make great masterpieces.  They are simply amazing!  They also come in metalix and neon colors for even more fun.  You can use them on a variety of surfaces including wood, canvas, paper, poster paper, and cardboard. 
Here's another fun project put together by The Pencil Grip, Inc using white paper and white Mylar inflated balloons - perfect for Mother's Day!

 

The Pencil Grip, Inc. also sent us one of their Pencil Grips to try out. We received the original pencil grip and Sarah loves using it. She said it makes writing much more comfortable instead of feeling like you are writing with a piece of wood. Their pencil grip is rated #1 by teachers, doctors, and occupational therapists.  It is a great fit for adults and children and it does not matter if they are left handed or right handed.  Invented in 1992, the pencil grip continues to be a #1 best seller on Amazon.

For more inspiration and creative ideas visit The Pencil Grip, Inc. on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.