CC week 1, Cycle 1: OiLS, a concept from Mona Brooks’ Drawing with Children, relates to teaching the fundamentals of drawing with 5 basic shapes, which are represented in the Acronym OiLS. The O in the word OiLS represents a circle, the dot of the i is a dot, the line of the i is a line, the L is an angle and the S is a curved line. Children can learn drawing skills through these basic shapes. Week 1 of each CC cycle is has an art focus on learning the meaning of OiLS and using the 5 basic shapes to create an art project.
I plan to tie in several of our art lessons to the CC science for cycle 1. We will have memory work about the the classification of living things, cells, plants, and flowers in the first 12 weeks, as well as two nature walks in weeks 7 and 8, and learning the parts of a flower in week 11. Some of our science this cycle will include nature journaling. For Cycle 1 week 1 my class will learn how to draw flowers using OiLS. I hope to incorporate a stealthy preview of week 11 “parts of a flower” memory work as we work through the lesson, drawing petal, stamen, anther, pistil, and sepals.
This lesson is a great way to learn the 5 elements of shape in drawing, and should come in handy later in the year when we start our nature journaling. You can easily see from my drawings that I am not an artist, and I have never attempted to draw flowers using OiLS before. As a tutor I don’t need to be a professional artist, just a “lead learner” as the tutor leads students and parents in using the classical method and tools of learning. I think these drawings looked even better after I colored them in, and I was pretty proud of them!
I was using step by step illustrations from How to Draw Flowers by Levy as a model. In drawing these flowers there are many opportunities to incorporate circles, dots, straight lines, angled lines, and curved lines. I haven’t colored mine in yet but I plan to pick a few favorite flowers to draw and leave some time in the lesson for coloring them in. So far my favorites are the iris, aster, buttercup, daffodil, carnation, zinnia, and sunflower.
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