TOS Review–ARTistic Pursuits

It’s Speak Up Saturday! Time for a review (0r two)…

From the Publisher:

The ARTistic Pursuits approach to teaching art is a welcome departure from typical art instruction books. This award winning homeschool art program meets the specific needs of homeschoolers at home. A variety of fun art lessons teach both the expressive and technical aspects of art while allowing children to make choices about what and how they will draw, paint, and sculpt.

• Preschool children enjoy kids art activities that encourage exploration of art materials and their world.
• Kindergarten and Elementary art instruction combines art history with hands-on art projects.
• Middle School and High School art students learn about artists, art history, and art techniques in both drawing instruction and painting instruction.

I had the opportunity to review ARTistic Pursuits, K-3 Book 1, and I am so glad that I did! I wasn’t planning on doing any specific art activities with Kahlen this year, but this program is fantastic. I’ll let them explain more about what is included in each lesson:

Read one lesson per week and your child's creative efforts will flourish. From art educators to moms with no art experience; all are successfully teaching children art using ARTistic Pursuits. Lessons capture children's interests and imaginations while introducing the fundamental principles of art. Lessons are divided into three sections as follows:

• What Artists Do: Ten lessons cover activities artists engage in when making art such as imagining and observing. Children explore drawing and painting techniques, gaining experience in pencil, color, and brush work.
• What Artists See: Seven lessons cover the elements that artists use in 2-dimesional and 3-dimensional works such as shape, form, and color. Children explore collage, paper works, and color mixing. Children gain experience in handling scissors, glue, and paper forms.
• Exploring Ancient Art: Fifteen lessons cover ancient art from the cave paintings of France to book illumination of the 13th century. Children see that art is more than just a picture on a wall. Cultures used it in different ways and for different purposes. Lessons expand the child's ideas of what art is and where we find it. Children explore mural, pottery, low-relief, paper art, bookbinding, mosaic techniques and more.

Kahlen is at a stage in her artwork where some direction is very helpful and gives her all kinds of ideas about what else she can draw and make. She absolutely loves crafting, coloring, etc. so this has been really fun.

  She has enjoyed getting to use a variety of new art supplies, such as watercolor crayons, to create new pictures.

What surprised me, actually, was how well she has taken to it. She really tries to follow what the activity says to do in each project and spends a long time thinking about the composition and drawing each object in her picture carefully.

While we haven’t been able to complete one lesson per week, the ones that we have completed have not taken any prep work from me other than having the correct supplies on hand. They have been fun, engaging, and a great learning experience.

ARTistic Pursuits has 10 different books available ranging from preschool to high school. You can read about each one here. You can take a look at a sample lesson for the book that I got here, the book retails for $42.95. You can also purchase supply kits from them if you are ready to get everything up front and don’t want the hassle of hunting it all down. The kits seem to cost a lot, but they are high quality art supplies that are cheaper to buy in this kit instead of individually. If you don’t have any fine arts supplies, I would recommend just purchasing the kit.

I highly recommend this curriculum! We have really enjoyed the projects we have done so far and I can see that it has gotten Kahlen to think about art and her “projects” in a whole new way (She’s currently “writing” a book about Christmas eve that I have nothing to do with. It’s 10 pages complete with illustrations and words)

See what other crew members are saying here.

~S

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this product through The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.