Disclaimer: I can't take credit for this idea, but I also can't remember where I got it! I found it on some homeschooling blog, but I apparently didn't pin it like I usually do. If I'm able to find it at some point, I will come back here and give credit and add a link.
I don't know about you, but I've struggled to incorporate art into our homeschool even though I've really wanted to. So when I found this idea on a homeschooling blog recently, I jumped on it for the new semester and we are really enjoying it! The only thing I had to buy was these Usborne Famous Paintings flash cards (which you can buy on Amazon or from an Usborne seller) pictured above.
So what we do is when it's time for art, the girls blindly choose a card from the deck. They study the painting on the card for a minute or two, trying to notice all the details. Then they read out loud to me the back of the card, which tells a few interesting things about the painting without getting boring. Lastly, it's time for the fun part: they get to try to reproduce the painting themselves! So far we've mostly used colored pencils, but have also tried cutting and pasting construction paper kind of like Matisse and only using dots and dashes like Seurat. They have enjoyed this even more than I expected (except when I tried to get H to do The Creation of Adam upside down on the bottom of a chair like Michelangelo did... she wasn't having that), and even in the short amount of time that we've been doing it, I can tell that their attention to detail has already improved significantly!
This may be the lazy/busy/overwhelmed mom's way of doing art, but at least it's something!
Also, I consider this art study the same way that we approach the memory work we do with Classical Conversations: it's laying a foundation for them to learn more about these subjects in the future. You know how the first time you drive in a new place it's all foreign and you're totally disoriented, but the next time you drive there you have a better idea of where you are, and then after a few times you know exactly where to go? That's what learning anything is like, and in CC we expose kids to a lot of information when they're little so that when they get a little older and revisit it, they already have a foundation on which to build.
I've already seen this idea play out with the girls when we learn a little about something from singing the timeline song, and then a couple of weeks later we learn more about it while listening to Story of the World, and they're excited because they have already heard of it before!
I hope this will help someone else incorporate art into your homeschool as it has us!
I don't know about you, but I've struggled to incorporate art into our homeschool even though I've really wanted to. So when I found this idea on a homeschooling blog recently, I jumped on it for the new semester and we are really enjoying it! The only thing I had to buy was these Usborne Famous Paintings flash cards (which you can buy on Amazon or from an Usborne seller) pictured above.
So what we do is when it's time for art, the girls blindly choose a card from the deck. They study the painting on the card for a minute or two, trying to notice all the details. Then they read out loud to me the back of the card, which tells a few interesting things about the painting without getting boring. Lastly, it's time for the fun part: they get to try to reproduce the painting themselves! So far we've mostly used colored pencils, but have also tried cutting and pasting construction paper kind of like Matisse and only using dots and dashes like Seurat. They have enjoyed this even more than I expected (except when I tried to get H to do The Creation of Adam upside down on the bottom of a chair like Michelangelo did... she wasn't having that), and even in the short amount of time that we've been doing it, I can tell that their attention to detail has already improved significantly!
This may be the lazy/busy/overwhelmed mom's way of doing art, but at least it's something!
Also, I consider this art study the same way that we approach the memory work we do with Classical Conversations: it's laying a foundation for them to learn more about these subjects in the future. You know how the first time you drive in a new place it's all foreign and you're totally disoriented, but the next time you drive there you have a better idea of where you are, and then after a few times you know exactly where to go? That's what learning anything is like, and in CC we expose kids to a lot of information when they're little so that when they get a little older and revisit it, they already have a foundation on which to build.
I've already seen this idea play out with the girls when we learn a little about something from singing the timeline song, and then a couple of weeks later we learn more about it while listening to Story of the World, and they're excited because they have already heard of it before!
I hope this will help someone else incorporate art into your homeschool as it has us!
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