Monday, September 12, 2011

Homeschool Art
This year, I really went back and forth on if we should be doing any "formal" art or not. I browsed the two (no, there aren't very many out there) art booths at the homeschool convention and although I fell in love with the Atelier video-based program specifically for home educated children, I left it empty-handed due to the fact that it was a bit costly. I enjoyed the next day's classes and activities and found myself (yet, again) at the same art booth for Atelier talking with the representative about the fact that I have three small children and is this program really necessary. Well, after calling my husband and talking it over with him, we decided that we should go for it and give it a try. After all, it is the only homeschool art program that I found that I really liked and since I stink at art, I wanted a video-based series with an actual experienced teacher and this one had it. Can I just tell you that IT IS FABULOUS!


Every child of any age can watch the teacher and participate at their own level.
Here's the caterpillar (a lesson on different types of lines) on TV that the art teacher did.

My favorite thing to do is sit down on Monday afternoons and do art with the kids. We've had three successful Mondays (we do art on Mondays) of art class with the program and Avonlea especially never wants to put it away. They beg to move ahead to the next lesson.
The first lesson talked about lines and we drew caterpillars with all different kinds of lines. The second lesson was based off of Picaso's picture with the hands holding flowers, which we drew our own version of. The third lesson is using potatos (cut in half) to make faces (you mix the paint to your skin color) for a family portrait. The lessons are for preschool-aged children who can follow simple directions (which is what we started with) up to high school-aged kids for more in-depth lessons.
I just love how our house looks after "Art Day" as we've got paints, brushes, oil pastels, and colored papers everywhere. We usually do it at around 3:00 when the oldest two are up from Quiet Time and the younger two are sleeping, but for this video, we got a late start and everyone was up. Norah loves participating though and Isaac just sort of hangs out.

We also used this program for our mom's group homeschool room today and painted Picaso. The kids couldn't get enough and were still painting as parents came to pick them up. We also started a neat lesson on "The Family Portrait" by painting with potato prints for the faces and learning how to draw the features. If anyone local wants to visit our house on Monday afternoons to join in on some fun art, let us know. :) Hopefully, we'll post more videos in the future on the various lessons.

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