The Four Seasons Vivaldi style

Lately we've been listening to Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.

I painted four of these bare trees for each of us.  I then put on one of the seasons and while we listened to it we talked about that season and painted our tree how it would look at that particular time of year. 

I hung the finished products up by our kitchen table so we can talk about them and see them whenever we eat.  We can also see the changing season out the windows as we talk.

The next activity we did was focusing on a specific season and that was Spring.  We listened to the first movement and focused on the form.  In this movement there are four particular themes that you can hear.  We have a different scarf for each theme.  The green scarf represents the trees, colorful red birds, blue river, black and gold thunderstorm and pink and yellow sunshine.

At first I called out each theme as it came and L picked up the corresponding scarf and waved it like a tree or bird etc.

The second time she was able to hear the themes herself and had a ball running back and forth picking up the scarves as the music changed.

The order is trees,birds,trees,river,trees,thunderstorm,trees,sun,trees,sun and trees.  They are quite easy to identify after listening to it a few times and as I said even L got them after the second try.

I got this fantastic idea from here.

While I was searching for a recording of The Four Seasons on Youtube I came across this these amazing videos of sand animation.  The whole family watched them totally amazed and L and I wanted to try it for ourselves.

So here we are in our tiny bathroom in the dark : )

I used a deep white plastic tray and rested it between two small stools.  We added some sand and put a reading lamp underneath the tray.  I had the laptop in there as well and we watched the videos as we drew.

Here are some of L's impressions. 

This was so fun and cool and I know we're going to be going into the bathroom quite often : )  It would also be a novel way to learn how to write letters.

Check out the artists and art button on the right to see what others have done this week.