Okay, I know saving fine paintings as desktop wallpaper isn’t a new idea. I’ve seen it suggested on tons of websites over the years. But it’s such a good idea that I wanted to mention it here too. For years, we have been making use of the wonderful artist study suggestions at Ambleside Online. I download the images into a folder on my hard drive and set my desktop background to cycle through them at five-minute intervals. This week, just in time for our read-aloud of From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler, we’ll be enjoying a selection of Michelangelo paintings and sculptures. Ambleside did all the work for me by tracking down the best images (thanks, fabulous AO folks!).

The Mary Cassatt selections are gorgeous—my girls’ favorites so far.

Today, though, we’re taking a diversion from fine art…we were reading about Stonehenge in a history storybook this morning, and the kids wanted to see what it looks like, so we jumped on Google and found this site full of beeyootiful images like this one.