Build Your Own Homeschool Art Curriculum

I love art appreciation and helping other families get started with art appreciation. I spend lots of time reading art books and viewing websites that feature art and I have built up a whole library of great resources over the years. I am often asked what my favorite picks are for staring an art resource library because it can be confusing and most of us don't have a fortune to invest on all the great stuff out there to chose from.

Building a shelf of books that will last you throughout your homeschooling years is tricky but if you plan right and budget a little each year you will soon have a library of books to pull from for your children.

Looking for books to view great art? Trying to narrow down the art appreciation choices to a select few? Read on....

This book is an overview of art history aimed at younger children but can be used with children up through middle school if you want to offer exposure to major artists and their paintings. The twenty-two artists included are familiar names to most of us and included in the book are large images of famous works of art that are child appropriate. Each artist has a short biography with interesting facts and then a follow-up activity with common art materials you probably have on hand.

The follow up projects in this book are easy to complete even if you are beginner artists. The instructions are easy to follow and the materials are inexpensive and you probably have many of them on hand.

You can view the artwork in the book, read the biography, and then offer the project to your children.

This is a staple of our art appreciation program and it is the perfect coloring book to go along with any art plans you are using with your children. It matches up with the Usborne Art Treasury with blackline drawings of famous artwork. We use colored pencils, thin markers, or watercolors with our Art Masterpieces coloring book.

This coloring book can be used with colored pencils, crayons, watercolor pencils, watercolors (if you remove the pages from the book), or markers. My children like to use these pages as a follow up to an artist study and they then may later wish to draw the painting out for themselves to paint. I think of the coloring books as stepping stones to doing their own copies of artwork.

You can read more about how we use Dover Coloring Books in our family on my Squidoo lens Dover Coloring Books.

Mona Brookes - From Drawing With Children

"We need to stop mystifying the drawing process and explain to students how artists actually achieve the results they do. For instance, Picasso and Michelangelo both copied other artists' work for at least two years as part of their initial art training. When Picasso began to express himself in what were considered "unique" styles he was actually copying many of his images from African masks. Painters such as Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec worked from photographs of their subjects, and many famous painters have used each other's paintings for inspiration."

Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes,

page 11 in the section, Changing Your Attitudes and Abilities

You can read more about this idea of copying art as part of your art appreciation in my blog entry Drawing With Children - Think Of It As Copywork

Learning to draw is a process like learning a new language or playing an instrument. It progresses in spurts and you never know how it happens. Offering a program like Drawing With Children helped me to learn how to help my kids with their drawing skills. In the process, I found that sketching is a relaxing hobby and try to fit it in every week. I know that many of us grew up thinking that we had no talent in art but if you can spare a few minutes a week....you may surprise yourself. Helping them learn to draw is a gift that you can give your child that will last a life time..

For many of us the Impressionists are some of our favorite artists and they are very appealing to children of all ages as well. This book has it all with biographies and information about the Impressionist time period of art. There are suggested follow-up activities for each artist covered in the book. The materials used are common items you will have on hand. The biographies are a little more in-depth and would be more appropriate for middle schoolers to read or for the parent to read aloud.

Once you hit high school, our children are ready for a more in-depth study of the artists they have become familiar with during the proceeding years. They are ready to put the artists together by time period and art periods. They are ready for more mature themes in art. The Story of Painting is the best choice in my opinion because of the large colored images and also nice close-ups of the details in some paintings.

If you click over to Amazon.com you can look inside the book and get an idea of the quality of this book.

I suggest planning on purchasing this book during the middle school years, using it to supplement your artist study and online viewing. We have used our copy of this book since 5th grade and my boys still use it just about every week as part of their art appreciation study.

If you have another pick for a review, please leave a comment.