2023-03-30_How_to_Invest_in_Your_Children_at_a_Very_Young_Age_Part_10-Develop_Artistic_Ability_and_Appreciation
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00:00:30.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight,
00:00:34.000 | and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,
00:00:37.000 | while building a plan for financial freedom in ten years or less.
00:00:39.800 | My name is Joshua Sheets, and today we're going to continue our series on building financial freedom
00:00:43.600 | by making sure your children are not dependent on you for too long.
00:00:47.600 | One of the components of this series is how to invest in your children when very young.
00:00:52.200 | And of course, the thing that I've mentioned several times is that I have long believed that
00:00:57.600 | the money that we spend on our children is often most effectively spent,
00:01:01.600 | has the highest return on investment, when we invest it in their children when they are young.
00:01:06.000 | And yet, these are ideas that I haven't developed fully for you in the podcast up till now.
00:01:11.400 | And so I've been trying to give them deep attention here,
00:01:14.200 | talk with you about them in great detail to give you ideas about how to invest in your children.
00:01:20.200 | However, one of the reasons this is important is to simply fulfill that little claim that I make in the tagline every day,
00:01:26.800 | how to build a plan for financial freedom in ten years or less.
00:01:30.800 | And the idea here is just simply, if you can do a good job in the first ten years of your children's life,
00:01:36.800 | then you shouldn't have so many financial obligations, unless you want to, down the road.
00:01:44.800 | But if you don't do a good job early in your children's life, you can wind up with many financial obligations.
00:01:50.000 | And so I think this series is trying to help you to help fulfill that tagline,
00:01:55.000 | even though we're not talking necessarily about how to make more money for you, so that you can be financially free.
00:02:00.800 | Today, I intend to wrap up some important topics related to how to invest into your children's brains, your minds,
00:02:07.200 | how to help them become smarter, help their brains to function in a superior manner.
00:02:12.400 | We've been talking about how to invest in your children's bodies,
00:02:15.400 | then we switched to how to invest in your children's minds.
00:02:18.200 | And in the context of investing in the minds of your children, or the brains,
00:02:22.400 | we talked about physical care, good nutrition, making sure they have a high-fat diet,
00:02:26.400 | no junk food, not a lot of carbohydrates, lots of movement and exercise to keep their bodies healthy and keep their brains well oxygenated,
00:02:33.400 | lots of sunshine, we talked about avoiding trauma, avoiding physical trauma, chemical toxins, etc.
00:02:39.400 | We talked about how to enhance their cognitive ability by investing into lots of words,
00:02:45.200 | helping them become literate at a very young age, investing into high levels of numeracy.
00:02:49.800 | We talked about multilingualism, and then recently I talked about writing,
00:02:53.600 | helping our children to learn to be skilled and competent writers in order to effectively think, to become better thinkers.
00:03:05.600 | My own brain fails me.
00:03:07.600 | Today, I want to move a little bit more quickly, and I want to talk about art, music, and memorization.
00:03:15.400 | The reason I'm going to move a little bit more quickly is because these are areas in which I myself am not an expert.
00:03:21.600 | All of the previous comments that I have made have come from a place of experience and research,
00:03:28.800 | such that I feel very confident sharing them with you.
00:03:31.800 | However, in these areas, I'm convinced that these topics today are important, but I'm still working out ways to try to apply them.
00:03:39.600 | And so I can't speak from such a deep well of expertise as I would like,
00:03:43.200 | but I want to make you aware of them, and perhaps you chat with me in a few years,
00:03:47.600 | and I'll share with you more of my lessons along the way.
00:03:51.200 | Let's begin with art.
00:03:53.400 | And the reason I'm switching the order, I was going to start with music, but let's begin with art,
00:03:56.200 | because I actually wanted to connect this, and I meant to say one more thing recently with regard to writing.
00:04:03.800 | In the previous episode in this series, I talked about the value of writing,
00:04:07.200 | and I focused on writing, and I was fairly agnostic about the tools,
00:04:11.400 | but I meant to include a short conversation at the end of that podcast about the value of writing by hand.
00:04:18.200 | And so let me do this very concisely by simply reading to you an article from Psychology Today.
00:04:23.400 | And this is an article by Dr. William Clem.
00:04:27.200 | He posts as the memory medic.
00:04:29.400 | This is quite old, more than a decade old, or about a decade old,
00:04:32.600 | but it's called "Why Writing by Hand Could Make You Smarter."
00:04:35.600 | In surprising studies, researchers find benefits to setting keyboards aside.
00:04:40.600 | Have you ever tried to read your physician's prescriptions?
00:04:43.200 | Children increasingly print their writing because they don't know cursive,
00:04:46.400 | or theirs is simply unreadable.
00:04:48.800 | I have a middle school grandson who has trouble reading his own cursive.
00:04:52.800 | Grandparents may find that their grandchildren can't even read the notes they send.
00:04:57.200 | Our new U.S. Secretary of the Treasury can't, or won't, write his own name on the new money being printed.
00:05:03.400 | When we adults went to school, one of the first things we learned was how to write the alphabet,
00:05:07.600 | in caps and lowercase, and then to handwrite words, sentences, paragraphs, and essays.
00:05:13.400 | Some of us were lucky enough to have penmanship class where we learned how to make our writing pretty and readable.
00:05:19.200 | Today, keyboarding is in.
00:05:21.000 | The Common Core Standards no longer require elementary students to learn cursive,
00:05:25.000 | and some schools are dropping the teaching of cursive entirely, dismissing it as an "ancient skill."
00:05:30.800 | The primary schools that teach handwriting spend only just over an hour a week,
00:05:35.000 | according to Zaner Bloser, Inc., one of the nation's largest handwriting curriculum publishers.
00:05:40.000 | Cursive is not generally taught after the third grade.
00:05:43.000 | My penmanship class was in the seventh grade.
00:05:45.200 | Maybe it's just coincidence, but the seventh grade was when I was magically transformed from a poor student into an exceptional student.
00:05:52.200 | Yet scientists are discovering that learning cursive is an important tool for cognitive development,
00:05:57.400 | particularly in training the brain to learn functional specialization, that is, the capacity for optimal efficiency.
00:06:04.600 | In the case of learning cursive writing, the brain develops functional specialization that integrates both sensation, movement control, and thinking.
00:06:13.000 | Brain imaging studies reveal that multiple areas of the brain become co-activated during the learning of cursive writing of pseudoletters,
00:06:19.600 | as opposed to typing or just visual practice.
00:06:22.600 | There is a spillover benefit for thinking skills used in reading and writing.
00:06:26.800 | To write legible cursive, fine motor control is needed over the fingers.
00:06:31.200 | You have to pay attention and think about what and how you are doing it.
00:06:34.800 | You have to practice.
00:06:36.400 | Brain imaging studies show that cursive activates areas of the brain that do not participate in keyboarding.
00:06:42.600 | Much of the benefit of handwriting in general comes simply from the self-generated mechanics of drawing letters.
00:06:48.400 | In one Indiana University study, researchers conducted brain scans on preliterate five-year-olds before and after receiving different letter learning instruction.
00:06:57.600 | In children who had practiced self-generated printing by hand, the neural activity was far more enhanced and adult-like than in those who had simply looked at letters.
00:07:07.800 | The brain's reading circuit of linked regions that are activated during reading was activated during handwriting, but not during typing.
00:07:15.800 | This lab has also demonstrated that writing letters in a meaningful context, as opposed to just writing them as drawing objects,
00:07:22.800 | produced much more robust activation of many areas in both hemispheres.
00:07:28.000 | In learning to write by hand, even if it is just printing, the brain must locate each stroke relative to other strokes,
00:07:33.400 | learn and remember the appropriate size, the slant of global form, and feature detail characteristics of each letter, develop categorization skills.
00:07:41.600 | Cursive writing, compared to printing, should be even more beneficial because the movement tasks are more demanding,
00:07:47.400 | the letters are less stereotypical, and the visual recognition requirements create a broader repertoire of letter representation.
00:07:54.400 | Cursive is also faster and more likely to engage students by providing a better sense of personal style and ownership.
00:08:01.400 | Other research highlights the hand's unique relationship with the brain when it comes to composing thoughts and ideas.
00:08:07.200 | Virginia Beringer, a professor at the University of Washington, reported her study of children in grades 2, 4, and 6
00:08:14.800 | that revealed they wrote more words faster and expressed more ideas when writing essays by hand versus with a keyboard.
00:08:23.000 | There is a whole field of research known as haptics, which includes the interactions of touch, hand movements, and brain function.
00:08:29.800 | Cursive writing helps train the brain to integrate visual and tactile information and fine motor dexterity.
00:08:36.200 | School systems, driven by ill-informed ideologues and federal mandate,
00:08:40.400 | are becoming obsessed with testing knowledge at the expense of training kids to develop better capacity for acquiring knowledge.
00:08:46.800 | The benefits to brain development are similar to what you get with learning to play a musical instrument.
00:08:51.200 | Not everybody can afford music lessons, but everybody has access to a pencil and paper.
00:08:56.200 | Not everybody can afford a computer for their kids, but maybe such kids are not as deprived as we would think.
00:09:01.400 | Take HART. Some schools celebrated National Handwriting Day on January 23.
00:09:06.400 | Cursive is not dead yet. We need to insist that it be maintained in our schools.
00:09:11.800 | So as we begin our conversation on art, recognize that even writing itself, I think, could be termed a form of art,
00:09:20.800 | especially when you get to more beautiful forms of writing such as cursive, perhaps going into calligraphy, etc.
00:09:26.800 | I always take, you know, quote-unquote "research" like this with a grain of salt,
00:09:30.900 | because I'm not well-read enough in these fields to judge the quality of the research.
00:09:36.400 | And you can find a study that says just about anything you want a study to say.
00:09:40.600 | And so I always am just a little bit skeptical of saying "this is the thing."
00:09:45.400 | But I do listen. And when you have somebody who is probably a competent professional here
00:09:51.400 | talking about how this could be one thing that could make your children smarter, pay attention.
00:09:56.400 | I think there's good evidence from experience that many people think better and they write better when writing by hand.
00:10:04.400 | Even though most of us have developed significant typing skill, I still know authors, well, I guess for us ourselves,
00:10:12.400 | many of us, even though we're skilled typists, if we want to actually think, we'll often choose a paper and pen.
00:10:19.400 | And it's not only because you face fewer distractions, but it's actually the act of writing longhand,
00:10:26.400 | especially if someone has learned it and has learned how to be competent and fluid in it.
00:10:30.400 | The act of writing with pen and paper allows your thoughts to be better, more clear, probably because you're slowed down.
00:10:39.400 | I could cite even today a couple of authors that I know of who are very skilled, perfectly competent typists, etc.,
00:10:48.400 | who choose to write their books with pen and paper in the old-fashioned way rather than writing directly into a word processor.
00:10:59.400 | I don't think that's the norm, to be clear. I think that most authors today use a word processor, use keyboarding to enter their text
00:11:07.400 | or use voice dictation because of the superior speed, because of the better editing ability, etc.
00:11:12.400 | But throughout history, most of the great works of literature have been written with pen and paper.
00:11:17.400 | And the process of creating something with pen and paper is quite slow compared to keyboarding,
00:11:25.400 | which allows you to spend more time crafting your thoughts, making them clearer, using more elegant prose,
00:11:34.400 | driving right to the heart of the matter, being more concise with your expression.
00:11:39.400 | All of these are benefits of writing with a pen and paper.
00:11:42.400 | And so even today I know of some best-selling authors, again, who still create their first draft by hand
00:11:50.400 | because it slows them down and allows them to create better ideas.
00:11:54.400 | I think this is something that as we teach writing to our children we should keep in mind,
00:11:59.400 | that it is very useful for our children to be forced to slow down and consider their thinking.
00:12:07.400 | Now, quick comment on the topic of cursive. I myself do think that cursive should be taught and that it is important.
00:12:15.400 | I can't imagine, when I write, I always write in cursive. It's a far superior technology to manuscript printing.
00:12:23.400 | There is an excellent argument to be made, however, that it's an outdated technology.
00:12:29.400 | And I've gone back and forth on this.
00:12:31.400 | Originally, when I started homeschooling our children, my wife and I decided that we were just going to teach cursive first.
00:12:37.400 | We came across some people who recommended this and the articles were persuasive to me, so we just started with cursive.
00:12:43.400 | We didn't teach our children handwriting. We started with cursive.
00:12:47.400 | Unfortunately, what we found in the fullness of time was that, at least my eldest, who is male, he just printed anyway.
00:12:58.400 | And what happened is, because he was never taught to print, he just printed himself based upon reading the letters and observing them.
00:13:07.400 | So his stroke order was all wrong, letters were poorly formed, etc.
00:13:11.400 | So for a time I just tossed the cursive into the back of the cupboard and we went through and tried to instruct him in some remedial letter formation,
00:13:21.400 | so at least you can get stroke order a little bit better, etc.
00:13:25.400 | That particular child, also being a boy, suffers from pencil allergies like many boys seem to.
00:13:30.400 | I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong. I've done some tests and whatnot and everything seems fine.
00:13:36.400 | But still, I just said, "No, there's no point in forcing this too much."
00:13:39.400 | But it's actually a weakness right now in our homeschool that I intend to go back and we're going to go back and really become skilled in writing in cursive.
00:13:48.400 | And it is a fundamentally important technology to make writing smooth and easy.
00:13:54.400 | And it has the benefit of being faster than printing and it may also have these benefits that can impact the brain and brain power.
00:14:03.400 | And to be able to sit down and comfortably and smoothly write an essay with few mistakes,
00:14:08.400 | I just think it's easier to do that when you're writing by hand and it builds a skill set that is quite useful.
00:14:15.400 | Now, continuing to art, I think of this kind of writing as a form of art.
00:14:22.400 | And I think that art is something else that we should focus on as a way of enhancing cognitive ability.
00:14:28.400 | There are two ways to think about art or using art.
00:14:32.400 | The first is in terms of appreciating art, taking it in, viewing art or engaging with art as a consumer.
00:14:39.400 | And then there is the expression of producing art, drawing a picture, making a painting, creating something with your hands.
00:14:46.400 | Both aspects of art are useful and while one may be more effective at making you "smarter", they're still both useful.
00:14:58.400 | Let me read to you an article here that I found on a website called bebrainfit.com.
00:15:05.400 | It's called "The Mental Health Benefits of Art Are for Everyone".
00:15:09.400 | As always, you will have to judge the claims, but it's useful to know about them.
00:15:15.400 | "Creating art relieves stress, encourages creative thinking, increases brain plasticity, and imparts other mental health benefits.
00:15:23.400 | And anyone can do art."
00:15:27.400 | "Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life." Pablo Picasso.
00:15:33.400 | There are a lot of misconceptions about what constitutes art and its usefulness as a therapeutic tool.
00:15:39.400 | Some think that you have to create paintings or sculptures to be considered a real artist.
00:15:44.400 | Others believe that you are either born with artistic talent or not.
00:15:48.400 | Many who don't consider themselves to be gifted artistically feel that there is no point in creating art since they won't be satisfied with the results.
00:15:56.400 | Another myth is that you have to work with an art therapist to experience any emotional benefits from creating art.
00:16:02.400 | But we are all born with an innate desire to express ourselves and art encompasses a wider range of activities than you might imagine.
00:16:09.400 | Here are some of the best ways in which creative expression can benefit mental health, making you a happier, healthier person.
00:16:16.400 | How Creating Art Relieves Stress
00:16:19.400 | Activities like painting, sculpting, drawing, and photography are relaxing and rewarding hobbies that can lower your stress level and leave you feeling mentally clear and calm.
00:16:29.400 | Creating art provides a distraction, giving your brain a break from your usual thoughts.
00:16:34.400 | The average person has roughly 70,000 thoughts per day and 90% of them are exactly the same day in and day out.
00:16:40.400 | When you are totally immersed in a creative endeavor, you may find yourself in what's known as "the zone" or a state of "flow".
00:16:48.400 | This meditative-like state focuses your mind and temporarily pushes aside all your worries.
00:16:54.400 | Hundreds of years ago, Leonardo da Vinci noticed that "painting embraces all the ten functions of the eye, that is to say, darkness, light, body and color, shape and location, distance and closeness, motion and rest."
00:17:09.400 | Creating art trains you to concentrate on details and pay more attention to your environment. In this way, it acts like meditation.
00:17:18.400 | A popular art trend for stress relief is adult coloring books.
00:17:33.400 | Art encourages creative thinking.
00:17:35.400 | Lawrence Katz, PhD, is an internationally recognized pioneer in neuron regeneration research and author of "Keep Your Brain Alive! 83 Neurobic Exercises to Help Prevent Memory Loss and Increase Mental Fitness."
00:17:47.400 | He found that mental decline was due mainly to the loss of communication between brain cells, not from the death of brain cells themselves.
00:17:56.400 | Dr. Katz coined the phrase "neurobics" to describe brain exercises that use the senses in new and novel ways.
00:18:03.400 | Creating art certainly fits this definition. It encourages creative thinking and lets you come up with your own unique solutions.
00:18:10.400 | Out-of-the-box thinking also stimulates the brain to grow new neurons.
00:18:15.400 | Creative thinking – a whole brain activity
00:18:18.400 | Contrary to popular belief, creative thinking does not mean using just the right side of your brain.
00:18:23.400 | What it does do, in fact, is get both hemispheres of your brain communicating with each other.
00:18:28.400 | The concept of left brain/right brain dominance never had a strong foundation in science in the first place, and now this theory has been totally debunked.
00:18:37.400 | It also promotes the stereotype that you can't be both analytical and creative, which is obviously not true.
00:18:43.400 | Some of the greatest minds of all time, including Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein, were simultaneously analytical and creative.
00:18:51.400 | The most complicated functions that humans perform, such as thinking creatively, learning a language, or playing or listening to music, all require whole brain thinking.
00:19:01.400 | It goes on to talk about how art boosts self-esteem and a sense of accomplishment.
00:19:07.400 | And then we talk about this, how art affects the brain, increased connectivity and plasticity.
00:19:12.400 | Every time you engage in a new or complex activity, your brain creates new connections between brain cells.
00:19:19.400 | Your brain's ability to grow connections and change throughout your lifetime is called brain plasticity, or neuroplasticity.
00:19:26.400 | Creating art stimulates communication between various parts of the brain.
00:19:30.400 | In this way, creating art has been proven to increase psychological and emotional resilience, making you more resistant to stress.
00:19:38.400 | It's thought that intelligence depends more on the number of brain connections than the size of the brain.
00:19:44.400 | Albert Einstein's brain was on the small side of average, but it did have an unusually high connectivity between the right and left hemispheres.
00:19:53.400 | How art makes children better students for life
00:19:56.400 | Educators and parents alike have long suspected that music and arts programs make for overall better students.
00:20:02.400 | Now, with neuroimaging, science can back this up.
00:20:06.400 | Children with musical training perform better in math, language, and reading.
00:20:10.400 | Early music lessons enhance brain plasticity and connectivity.
00:20:14.400 | There's evidence that the brain-enhancing benefits of music lessons received during childhood can follow through into adulthood, lasting a lifetime.
00:20:22.400 | The benefit of visual art programs are equally impressive.
00:20:26.400 | Art lessons increase brain plasticity, fluid intelligence, IQ, and attention.
00:20:31.400 | They improve overall behavior and reduce impulsiveness.
00:20:35.400 | Etiko goes on and talks briefly about budget cuts in art programs, and then we read this section here.
00:20:41.400 | Viewing art increases empathy, tolerance, and feelings of love.
00:20:45.400 | A study of over 10,000 students found that a one-hour trip to an art museum changed the way they thought and felt.
00:20:52.400 | Students who visited a museum not only showed improved critical thinking skills,
00:20:56.400 | they also exhibited greater empathy regarding how people lived in the past and expressed greater tolerance towards people different than themselves.
00:21:03.400 | Professor Samir Zeki, a neurobiologist at the University College London,
00:21:08.400 | discovered that simply the act of viewing art gives pleasure, much like falling in love.
00:21:13.400 | Brain scans revealed that looking at works of art triggers a surge of dopamine in the same area of the brain that registers romantic love.
00:21:22.400 | And then skipping down, one other last interesting comment on art and dementia patients.
00:21:30.400 | Art enhances cognitive abilities and memory, even for people with serious brain disorders.
00:21:35.400 | Dementia is mainly thought of as a memory loss problem, but patients also experience other symptoms,
00:21:40.400 | such as agitation, aggression, anxiety, depression, and insomnia.
00:21:45.400 | Drug treatment for dementia symptoms is generally not very successful.
00:21:49.400 | When dementia patients are encouraged to create visual art, they derive obvious pleasure from it.
00:21:54.400 | It improves their social behavior and self-esteem and reduces psychiatric symptoms.
00:22:00.400 | Goes on, talks about other expressions of art and art therapy.
00:22:05.400 | But I think that gives a good enough overview.
00:22:07.400 | Basically, art is good, art is useful.
00:22:10.400 | And art is useful both in terms of consuming it as well as in creating it.
00:22:16.400 | And both have their place and both are useful.
00:22:18.400 | There probably is a really good symbiotic relationship between the two.
00:22:22.400 | That the more you consume art, the more you want to create it.
00:22:25.400 | And the more you create art, the more of an avid consumer of art you wind up being.
00:22:30.400 | And so we can start this cycle anywhere.
00:22:33.400 | Now, I myself, unfortunately, was prey to the idea when I was younger that I was not very creative.
00:22:40.400 | I never learned how to draw, I never took an art class.
00:22:43.400 | And for a long period of my life, I thought to myself, "Oh, I'm just not very creative."
00:22:49.400 | Since then, I have come to a very different belief.
00:22:53.400 | I've come to the belief that I am actually exceedingly creative.
00:22:56.400 | I'm very creative, just like virtually everyone.
00:23:01.400 | If we don't hammer it out of people and say, "You're not creative," children are all creative.
00:23:05.400 | They're creative in different ways, certainly, but children are generally all creative.
00:23:08.400 | You and I are certainly creative.
00:23:11.400 | What I never had was I never had a lot of training regarding art.
00:23:15.400 | I never had a lot of art appreciation, and I never had a lot of training.
00:23:19.400 | Now, of course, I had one college class, art appreciation, and that helped something.
00:23:23.400 | But I think that art appreciation is something that we can and should facilitate into our children's lives more and more.
00:23:31.400 | A couple of thoughts on how to do this.
00:23:33.400 | Number one, in the Charlotte Mason tradition of homeschooling, we do this in the form of what's called picture study.
00:23:41.400 | It's a very simple process, but we basically show our children beautiful pictures and talk about them.
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00:24:17.400 | This is a technique that anybody can integrate.
00:24:19.400 | And to teach you about it, I'm going to play a portion of the audio from a lady that I respect and admire hugely,
00:24:27.400 | named Sonia Schaefer, who has a company named simply Charlotte Mason.
00:24:33.400 | And this is from an instructional video that she has on YouTube called "How to Do Picture Study."
00:24:38.400 | And just sit back and enjoy the instructions so that you can do this with your own children.
00:24:42.400 | Let's walk through a picture study.
00:24:44.400 | Picture study is one of the easiest things to add to your homeschool and one of the most enriching.
00:25:01.400 | Let's walk through how to do it.
00:25:04.400 | You'll need to select an artist and have a good-sized picture by that artist for your picture study lesson.
00:25:12.400 | All right, let's do a picture study, and then we'll walk through the steps that we used.
00:25:17.400 | For this picture study, we'll use "The Milkmaid" by Johannes Vermeer.
00:25:23.400 | You ready? All right.
00:25:25.400 | Look at the picture until you can close your eyes and see it in detail.
00:25:30.400 | If one part is a bit fuzzy, open your eyes and look at that part again.
00:25:35.400 | Take as long as you need.
00:25:38.400 | Now, describe the picture without looking.
00:25:42.400 | Try to start big and then work your way down to the details.
00:25:46.400 | Go ahead, pause here, and try to describe it aloud.
00:25:51.400 | When you're done with your description, look at the picture again
00:25:55.400 | to clarify or confirm any parts that you were uncertain about or couldn't remember clearly.
00:26:01.400 | In this picture, we gaze upon a servant carefully pouring milk from a pitcher into a ceramic vessel.
00:26:10.400 | The richly colored apron she's wearing was, ironically, very costly to paint
00:26:17.400 | because Vermeer used the rare mineral ultramarine to achieve its deep blue color.
00:26:24.400 | Along the floor, you can see a row of wall tiles.
00:26:29.400 | These are decorated blue and white and are the traditional Delft ware,
00:26:34.400 | famously manufactured in Vermeer's hometown of Delft.
00:26:39.400 | That square object in front of the tiles is a small foot warmer,
00:26:43.400 | which would be filled with coals and placed near one's feet for warmth in the drafty homes
00:26:49.400 | that lacked our modern heating systems.
00:26:52.400 | What other details do you notice in this picture?
00:26:56.400 | Look at all the different textures that Vermeer painted in this scene.
00:27:01.400 | There's glass and wood on the window, two baskets with two different weaving patterns,
00:27:08.400 | the cloth on the table and on the milkmaid, her skin, the plaster on the wall, the shiny lantern, the bread.
00:27:20.400 | There you go. That's a picture study.
00:27:24.400 | Now let's talk through what we did.
00:27:27.400 | Step 1. Look at the picture.
00:27:30.400 | Encourage your child to look at that picture until he can close his eyes
00:27:34.400 | and see it clearly in his imagination, with every detail in place.
00:27:39.400 | The larger the picture, the easier it is to see the details.
00:27:43.400 | I like to have at least an 8½ x 11" print, if possible.
00:27:49.400 | Step 2. Hide and describe the picture.
00:27:52.400 | Turn the picture over and ask the child to describe it to you.
00:27:57.400 | If needed, help him start with the big picture and then move down to the details.
00:28:02.400 | You can do that by simply saying something like, "Tell me about the whole picture first.
00:28:07.400 | It's a picture of . . . "
00:28:10.400 | If you're working with several children, you can ask each one to describe a different part of the picture in turn.
00:28:18.400 | Step 3. Look again and discuss.
00:28:22.400 | After the picture has been described, look at it again.
00:28:26.400 | This is the time to clarify or confirm any details that might have been uncertain or missed.
00:28:33.400 | You can also use this time to guide more in-depth observation, as we did with the textures,
00:28:41.400 | or to add some information about the picture that can't be gathered just from looking at it,
00:28:47.400 | like what I told you about the duftware tiles or the cost of the blue paint.
00:28:53.400 | Step 4. Put it on display.
00:28:56.400 | After you've studied the picture, put it on display for the rest of the week.
00:29:01.400 | Try to display it where your child can see it easily, so he can look at it as much as desired over the coming days.
00:29:10.400 | Do a picture study just once a week; it takes only 5 or 10 minutes.
00:29:15.400 | The next week, choose another picture by the same artist and go through the same steps.
00:29:21.400 | Look, hide and describe, look again and discuss, put it on display.
00:29:27.400 | You want to linger with one artist for a full term—12 weeks.
00:29:33.400 | Over the course of those 12 weeks, you want to cover about 6 to 8 works by that artist.
00:29:40.400 | That will give your child a good feel for that artist's style.
00:29:45.400 | Now, if you're studying only 6 or 8 works by that artist, what do you do during the other weeks of the term?
00:29:52.400 | Well, that's where you can level up or down.
00:29:59.400 | Most of you will not need to level down, because children of all ages enjoy looking at a picture and describing it.
00:30:07.400 | I level it down for my special needs daughter who struggles with verbal communication.
00:30:13.400 | When we do a picture study, we look at the picture, I tell her the name, and I might point out one or two aspects that I think will be interesting to her.
00:30:24.400 | I invite her to tell me something about the picture, but I don't require it because that pressure just makes her brain shut down.
00:30:33.400 | So we mainly look and then put it on display.
00:30:37.400 | During those extra weeks, you could do a little review that also encourages mental and verbal growth.
00:30:45.400 | So do three pictures and then take a week to play this game.
00:30:50.400 | Lay the three pictures out face-up and describe one of them.
00:30:55.400 | See if your child can identify which picture you are describing by the clues you give.
00:31:01.400 | You can customize how difficult or easy those clues are.
00:31:06.400 | After your chosen picture has been guessed, then let your child take a turn if she is able.
00:31:13.400 | She can select one of the other two pictures and give you a clue, or hopefully more, about which one it is so you can guess.
00:31:22.400 | Most of you, though, will be using those four to six extra weeks during the term to level up.
00:31:29.400 | Do that by reading a living biography about the artist.
00:31:34.400 | You can break it into sections if you would like and read just one section each week, asking for a narration.
00:31:42.400 | If you aren't sure how to do narration, I'll leave a link to that episode in the show notes.
00:31:47.400 | You can also ask the older children, probably grades seven and up, to draw a little sketch or diagram of one of the paintings,
00:31:58.400 | describing each element of that picture and where it goes.
00:32:02.400 | Don't ask your child to try to duplicate the painting; just see if he can sketch out all of the elements in their proper places.
00:32:11.400 | Even a diagram with stick figures and arrows and labels would work for this.
00:32:18.400 | Then, near the end of the term, after you feel like you know that artist's work and life more personally,
00:32:26.400 | you can enter him into your Book of Centuries.
00:32:28.400 | I'll leave a link to more explanation about that, too, in case you need it.
00:32:34.400 | Picture study is one of the easiest lessons to add to your week.
00:32:38.400 | Look, hide and describe, look again and discuss, put it on display.
00:32:47.400 | If you want picture studies all ready to go, check out our picture study portfolios.
00:32:53.400 | The portfolios make it so simple to do picture study because everything you need is right there.
00:33:00.400 | Each portfolio includes eight beautiful reproductions of works by one artist, interesting discussion points,
00:33:09.400 | and a biography and picture and Book of Centuries dates for the artist.
00:33:14.400 | It's truly grab-and-go.
00:33:17.400 | So, now that you know how simple it is to do, why not choose an artist and do a picture study next week?
00:33:24.400 | Check the show notes for a link to the picture study portfolios, the episode on narration, and more about the Book of Centuries.
00:33:33.400 | Thanks for joining me. I'll see you next time.
00:33:35.400 | I will link that video for you in the show notes if you would like to see the picture or review some of the other resources.
00:33:41.400 | But at its core, I want you to be aware that just learning to look at and appreciate beautiful pictures is something that will help your children immeasurably to see beauty in the world.
00:33:55.400 | If you make a habit of showing your children beautiful things, talking about those beautiful things,
00:34:01.400 | then your children will understand that beautiful things are important, and they'll have a desire to see and absorb and appreciate more beautiful things in their life,
00:34:10.400 | as well as perhaps to make some beautiful things.
00:34:13.400 | Picture study is very simple, something that anybody can do, whether you homeschool, whether you don't homeschool,
00:34:18.400 | can be just part of your life and lifestyle, and then it'll really enhance the opportunities that you have when your children are older to go to an art museum,
00:34:28.400 | to go to a gallery to look at pictures.
00:34:31.400 | Frequently, young people can't genuinely appreciate beautiful pictures in a gallery or in a museum
00:34:40.400 | because they just haven't spent much time looking at beautiful pictures and thinking about what they like and what they don't like.
00:34:46.400 | And so we can change that, and that growth in just appreciating art for what it is will help your children to be more observant in the world.
00:34:58.400 | Even that exercise, you'll notice that Sonia, when she was talking about the exercise, said, "Look at a picture and then close your eyes."
00:35:04.400 | This is an exercise in attention.
00:35:07.400 | There is an exercise that, I mean, spies use it, I don't know who to say, but I've heard it talked about in terms of spy training.
00:35:15.400 | Basically, here's a picture, look at it, and then immediately gone.
00:35:19.400 | And then you have to absorb with your brain all of the details of that picture.
00:35:24.400 | Your brain is capable of absorbing every detail about an image that is flashed against it,
00:35:32.400 | but it loses that capacity due to lack of use, generally speaking.
00:35:38.400 | And so if we simply train the brain to do more of it, then we will start to bring that capacity back.
00:35:47.400 | And this will help your children's skills with observation, which is useful in many more areas than just looking at beautiful pictures.
00:35:54.400 | Now, what about creating art?
00:35:56.400 | I think this is one of those areas where just giving your children the opportunity to create art is enough.
00:36:06.400 | Giving them some tools and opportunity.
00:36:08.400 | Now, I quickly confess that I wish I would like to do a better job in this area.
00:36:14.400 | The challenge that I have is just that art creation often becomes chaos.
00:36:18.400 | And that chaos tends to flow over to other parts of the house, and there's paint everywhere, and there's drawing everywhere, and there's paper everywhere, etc.
00:36:25.400 | My ambition is to be one of those fathers who is just generally unconcerned about the mess and the chaos.
00:36:31.400 | And unfortunately, I haven't reached that level of maturity yet.
00:36:35.400 | But I do think this is something that we can grow in, right?
00:36:37.400 | We can make opportunities for our children to make art.
00:36:40.400 | And children are generally able to make art that they think is beautiful.
00:36:44.400 | They don't necessarily need a lot of training.
00:36:47.400 | But then, of course, the next step is we can provide them with training.
00:36:50.400 | One of the things that I never grasped when I was in middle school and in high school and I just assumed that I had no artistic ability, I didn't know that art could be taught.
00:36:59.400 | I never signed up for an art class.
00:37:00.400 | I never bothered.
00:37:02.400 | I just thought I wasn't a good artist.
00:37:04.400 | I thought that being an artist was something that you were born with.
00:37:07.400 | It was a talent that you were born with.
00:37:09.400 | And either you had it or you didn't.
00:37:10.400 | And I knew I didn't have it.
00:37:11.400 | So, of course, what was the point?
00:37:12.400 | Today, I look at that, and I say, "Of course, that's silly."
00:37:15.400 | No, certainly.
00:37:16.400 | People have different levels of innate ability.
00:37:18.400 | But at the end of the day, there's a huge element of training.
00:37:21.400 | And even just some basic training can enhance someone's ability.
00:37:25.400 | And so today I look at the world, and I see it in a completely different vein.
00:37:29.400 | I understand that all you need is training and interest.
00:37:33.400 | And different people gravitate to a different type of artistic expression.
00:37:37.400 | We're not all going to paint oils on canvas.
00:37:40.400 | Some of us might create cartoons.
00:37:42.400 | Some of us might create doodles.
00:37:43.400 | But taking a little bit of training in creating art and learning how to draw,
00:37:48.400 | having a book on how to create doodles, etc.,
00:37:51.400 | will move you much closer in the direction of seeing yourself as an artist.
00:37:59.400 | And so what I have tried to do as a parent is, first of all,
00:38:02.400 | to make sure that I have good opportunities for art appreciation and picture study.
00:38:07.400 | I've tried to have books filled with beautiful pictures.
00:38:10.400 | I've purchased several really nice coffee table books,
00:38:13.400 | and I make sure those are in my library,
00:38:14.400 | and the children flip through them sometimes and look at the pretty pictures.
00:38:17.400 | I also have a collection of art instruction books.
00:38:21.400 | And if you go to Amazon or your library or whatever,
00:38:24.400 | you'll find all levels of these, from the very high artists on how to do
00:38:29.400 | pencil shading techniques on a human face to just how to make your doodles look cool.
00:38:34.400 | And so these books have instructions available to them.
00:38:41.400 | And so I try to make sure that my children have time and opportunity
00:38:45.400 | to follow some of the instructions in these books.
00:38:47.400 | And then obviously this is a great place for art class.
00:38:50.400 | I would like to incorporate more art classes into our family in the future,
00:38:54.400 | but I haven't done it yet.
00:38:57.400 | And as homeschoolers, it's something where it's more challenging to create.
00:39:00.400 | I have to be very intentional about finding a community class
00:39:03.400 | or enrolling in a school class, et cetera, and I haven't done that yet.
00:39:06.400 | But that may be something that you have access to.
00:39:08.400 | So encourage your children to take an art class.
00:39:10.400 | And don't judge them for their work and its excellence.
00:39:14.400 | Just recognize that art is one of those things that is fun, it's beautiful,
00:39:17.400 | it can be an incredible part of somebody's life.
00:39:20.400 | I think that this is also a really wonderful area where some of our modern apps
00:39:26.400 | and computer technology really, really shine.
00:39:29.400 | Now earlier in the series, I quite sternly made fun of educational apps.
00:39:34.400 | And I did that because I think that when you compare the kinds of apps
00:39:39.400 | that many people choose for their very young children to the alternatives,
00:39:46.400 | when you calculate the opportunity cost, in my opinion,
00:39:49.400 | many of those apps are just woefully mediocre.
00:39:54.400 | If you compare with your four-year-old the value of an app that's going to flash pictures
00:40:01.400 | and put letters on the screen versus the value of sitting and listening
00:40:05.400 | to a beautifully written audio book that has a rich vocabulary
00:40:09.400 | and your child is enraptured by it, I think the opportunity cost of the app is too high.
00:40:15.400 | But now when we pivot to something like art, like we're talking about here,
00:40:19.400 | here's where I think apps can really shine.
00:40:23.400 | I'm in the process of testing some of the iPad apps for learning how to draw
00:40:29.400 | to try to see are these a useful way that I can supplement the artistic creative ability
00:40:36.400 | of my children in a way that is really healthy and strong
00:40:40.400 | given that I don't have an art class to enroll them in with an art teacher
00:40:43.400 | who's going to do everything and give all those instructions.
00:40:46.400 | And there are a lot of how to draw apps available for an iPad
00:40:50.400 | or whatever kind of tablet you have available to you.
00:40:53.400 | And then when you get into the high-quality art creation programs, they're just incredible.
00:40:58.400 | And so whether it's the one that I use is Procreate on the iPad
00:41:02.400 | or whatever the versions that you have are, creating digital art,
00:41:06.400 | you can create incredible, beautiful digital art.
00:41:09.400 | And this is one of those things that I think combines some of the best benefits
00:41:14.400 | of digital technology in a way that few other things do.
00:41:19.400 | You have so many benefits of having a digital canvas that's never-ending
00:41:24.400 | and all the tools and all the different brushes and all the colors.
00:41:27.400 | You don't have to clean up the paint.
00:41:28.400 | You don't have to deal with all the hassle of having your children have all that set up.
00:41:32.400 | And yet you can create artistic expression in a really powerful way.
00:41:36.400 | This is where I think apps and tablets really shine.
00:41:40.400 | There's certainly probably not a replacement for sketching with charcoal
00:41:46.400 | and working with oil and et cetera.
00:41:48.400 | Again, I'm not an artist and I'm not competent enough to instruct.
00:41:51.400 | I wouldn't view it as a replacement, but I would view it as a really valuable supplement
00:41:56.400 | and in many cases a tool that has a really great implementation.
00:42:02.400 | And then I think that this activity is something that can be really healthily engaged with other people.
00:42:10.400 | And so maybe instead of a family game night, you have a family art night.
00:42:14.400 | And everyone sits around and some of us draw in a coloring book
00:42:17.400 | and others of us do art with pen and paper and colored pencils.
00:42:21.400 | And some of us are drawing on an iPad.
00:42:23.400 | But when we're creating art, we can be together in a really pleasurable way.
00:42:27.400 | We can play beautiful music or we can listen to a story or we can just talk with one another.
00:42:31.400 | And so this can keep our eyes and our hands busy and yet facilitate fellowship around the table
00:42:37.400 | in your family or with your friends, et cetera.
00:42:40.400 | And I think the Sips and Strokes is such a beautiful success in terms of a business opportunity for this reason.
00:42:48.400 | People can go to an art studio with their friends, take a bottle of wine along
00:42:52.400 | and receive instruction in how to create a painting.
00:42:55.400 | It's just a really fun and beautiful social setting that I think deserves our attention.
00:43:01.400 | And I think it genuinely can make us smarter and more appreciative human beings.
00:43:07.400 | The example that I think of is just always Leonardo da Vinci.
00:43:10.400 | What a titan of an intellect.
00:43:12.400 | And what he had was he had a very highly tuned sense of aesthetics
00:43:18.400 | mixed with a very skillful and knowledgeable engineering mind.
00:43:24.400 | And bringing those things together I think helps to create a whole person.
00:43:29.400 | I didn't intend to create a 42-minute podcast, but there I go.
00:43:33.400 | Those of you who heard me say I was going to cover three topics in one show at the beginning,
00:43:37.400 | you probably laughed to yourself.
00:43:39.400 | We're going to cut it off there and come back in the next episode with talking about music.
00:43:44.400 | Because music is similar to art in terms of the way we take it in, the way that we express it,
00:43:50.400 | and then the benefits.
00:43:52.400 | But I don't want to give it short shrift.
00:43:53.400 | I want to give it proper attention.
00:43:55.400 | Thank you for listening.
00:43:56.400 | I hope this is useful to you.
00:43:57.400 | I'll be back with you very soon.
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