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Now that D, in particular, is getting a little older, I am keen to be more thorough in my preparations for the children’s education. H is ever ready for more ‘work’ and enjoys joining in with his siblings, which means I need to plan work at all three development stages for the children.
One of the things I have always been keen to explore with the children is art. It’s not a subject I enjoyed myself at school, although I did enjoy other aspects of the arts such as music. One of the big drivers for us to choose to home educate was so that we could have a broad curriculum for the children and with that a more rounded approach that considered arts and the such.
With that in mind, I have spent some time over the last month giving thought to how we might cover art in a more structured way. There are of course always ways that you can introduce art to the everyday learning and projects that we do, but I want them to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of the different types of art.
Everyday Projects
We do regular projects at home that focus on many different things, and these are super varied. There’s always an element of art that can be weaved into these projects, be it a geography project and looking at famous artists from the country, looking at how artists have depicted the country and even creating our own art based on reading stories from the country or based on what we have learnt. There are also opportunities to think about textile art too with geography projects.
Learning about people of note is always good and we can learn about famous artists and sculptors and their work. We have done this a lot, and I find the Portrait of an Artist Series particularly helpful for this. We have the four in the series:
Focussed Sessions with Friends
In the past, I have run two-hour sessions at home for the children and their friends. We have talked about a certain artist, explored their work, and had a go at creating art in a similar style. We have a great session learning about Giacometti and the children got to work with different materials and to discuss how simplicity in art can be as powerful as intricate details.
In an ideal world, I would run more of these sessions, but I think it is unlikely I will be opening my home up in the first half of next year. I might try and run some via zoom if I can adapt the activities.
Planning our Art Learning
Starting in January, I am going to be much more disciplined with planning the children’s work. Since the summer I have been prepping activity packs that the children can pick up and complete independently. It’s mostly maths and English revision type stuff with some fun bits and pieces in there. I tend to have an evening where I print everything I need for the month and then I make them up once a week for them. The children know to grab their packs, and where to leave them for me to check and they go into a tray for me to file work away and refill the packs for the next week.
I have found that by having this made up in advance and the work planned, things run a bit smoother in the morning. The children have things to work through whilst I’m doing 1-1 work with the other children and I can prioritise areas for them to work on through these packs. I hope that by taking a similar approach to the other areas of work will make things run a bit smoother too.
I plan to use a couple of books as the basis of our studies and supplement with online bits and pieces where necessary. The books I plan to use are:
- Vincent’s Starry Night
- Be A Super Awesome Artist
- 50 Fantastic Ideas Inspired by Famous Artists
- Art Lab for Kids
These books all offer something different; either stories about the artist and their work or practical ideas for activities.
I’ve included images from within the books throughout this post, to give an idea of what they include. I think there is such a wide and varied range of activities and information we are bound to keep interested and occupied.
With D I will also be looking at art in a more critical way and using parts of Modern Art Explorer. Some of this is a little old for him yet, but there are some bits that I think he will get a lot out of if we look through it together.
I am really looking forward to this aspect of our home education next year and can’t wait to get started with it.
Sounds like a lot of organization and prep – but guess its the only way to make it work
It doesn’t take too long tbh; just means that we can get on with stuff whilst the kids are geared up and in the mood and not worry about me having to prep things ready for them, if it’s all ready to run with x