4 Easy Ways to Add Art to Your Homeschool
Covering the basic academic subjects every week can be challenging enough. The thought of adding in one more thing can be overwhelming. Thus art often gets neglected in a homeschool. Or you may not feel like you are talented enough or qualified to teach art. Nevertheless, there are some easy ways to add art into your homeschool routine without adding to your stress level.
Display Art
The first thing you can do is to add art around your home. There are many printable art collections available online that have a famous piece of art work along with information on the artist. I laminate the pages and hang them in various places around the house at the children’s eye level: dining room, school room, upstairs hallway next to the light switch, etc.
Strategically hanging art reproductions is an easy way to expose your children to different works of art. You can pick one a week to discuss or merely allow the children to view and read them on their own. Change the artwork every couple of weeks to keep a steady diet of fine art available to your children.
Buy or Borrow Art Books
Placing art books around your house is another option. You should always preview any books you choose before allowing your children to look though them to ensure that you consider all of the artwork within its pages to be appropriate for your family.
Use Art Curriculum
Even if you have no artistic talent yourself, you can use books, DVDs, online curriculum, or free art projects. You can work at your own pace and decide how often you want to fit art into your schedule. There are several curriculum choices that are written directly to the student and require no instruction from you at all, especially if you are working with older students. With my younger children, I sit down and present the art lesson to them, leave their supplies on the table, and allow them to create their art while I work with the older children on a different subject.
Cooperate
Getting together with other homeschool families for an art co-op is another solution for adding art to your homeschool. You can choose an artist each month to focus on, view some of his/her works, and create art inspired by the artist’s work. Or you could kill two birds with one stone and choose a specific time period and learn about history and art together. Another option would be to choose a particular medium and have the children create unique works of art using that medium. A co-op lightens your burden as a homeschool mom and provides chances for healthy socialization too.
Adding art to your homeschool does not have to be difficult or stressful. You will be amazed at how easy it can be and how much your children will learn.
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Author
Mama of 7 children -- 4 boys and 3 girls. My oldest daughter has graduated, and I am happily homeschooling pre-school through 8th grade. You can follow along with my homeschool journey at The Happy Homeschool Mom where I also share homeschool encouragement, product reviews, and recipes. Find me on Twitter @lthomeschoolmom.
Comments (5)
Excellent, simple tips to include the vital subject of art in the home, Lisa. Art influences us all, and we, as parents, should be there to guide our children to appreciate it.
We kind of have the opposite problem in our house… I’m planning arts and crafts and no one wants to do them lately. When we first began homeschooling my boys asked and begged to do art everyday. While we never quite made it to “everyday” we had art often and we all seemed to enjoy it. Lately when I ask them or mention we haven’t done art in a while they just shrug and walk away. I miss art and am looking for ways to get my kids excited about it again.
Hi Mother of 3,
As a veteran homeschool mom, I know how you feel 🙂 Although, my 2 “students” are all grown up now, I still recall THOSE days. I remember feeling absolutely giddy about various projects I dreamed up, worked to prepare, only to present them in anticipation of whoops and hollers of joy, but instead was met with frowns. Oi !! I have 1 daughter and 1 son. And, thinking back to our homeschooling days with a boy — how about drawing in dirt or mud (Yea, a little bit messy, but it may just spark some interest in other mediums) Or, how adding an edible apsect — drawing in pudding, or creating sugar cube sculptures, etc. Just a little food for thought 🙂 !!
Love art in the homeschool 🙂 Great ideas!!
Love this post. One of the reasons I pulled my boys from public school was that they removed art classes for financial reasons. New homeschoolers will really benefit from seeing how easy it is to add.