Art Curricula

[Marsha]

This is about the only thing I haven't decided on.
We really don't have the budget money for Artistic Pursuits because of the supplies needed for it.
What would you suggest for an 8th, 5th, 4th, and 1st grader?

[jcooperetc]

Meet the Masters is slightly less expensive ($29) per level and can be downloaded as an e-book. Teaches about artists and art technique. It uses some art supplies but not a lot - basic paints, pastels, colored paper. We have also used a book by Evan-Moor called Teaching Art to Children. It has chapters on all of the art techniques (line, color etc) and fairly simple projects to demonstrate and chapters at the end about artists. I am not an artist so I also have a book called Art is Fundamental that explains the principles of art and how to teach them to elementary school age children and includes art projects to demonstrate the principles. If you want just a basic review of art history and artists we used an annotated art book by Dorling Kindersley/Robert Cumming.

[Jenny in Florida]

Well, I was going to direct you to the wonderful, free online art curriculum I used with my kids a few years ago. However, apparently AOL decided to shut down the web hosting the person who wrote it was using, and it is now gone. That's a real shame.

Okay, you could also try KinderArt: http://www.kinderart.com/arthistory/

They have lots of hands-on art lessons that you could use to go along with pretty much any art history or art appreciation plan.

[ummtafari]

We use Art Adventures at Home with everyone and will continue to use it next year. My children are in 4th, 2nd, 1st, and K. It is very simple with minimal supplies needed.

[vansolkema1996]

We used Discovering Great Artist by Mary Ann Kohl in out Co-op. It gives a short biography on the great artist and then there is a project to do just like the great artist did. For older kids you could learn a bit more about the artist maybe look at more of their work ( the book only show s one sample). For alot of the project if you have paper and tempra paint you can find alot of the other things around the house to use

We used this with K-3rd grade but I thought about elaborating abit and using it with my 12YO. Our libray carried it so it might be some thing to check out. I also found it used for around $15.00.

[maadrose]

I have artistic pursuits and as an art teacher I really like it and it's well thought out and set up. You can easily substitute the art supplies. Like they call for watercolor crayons and you could just use watercolors in the tray like crayola or even from dollar tree. they suggest you use charcoal pencils, but regular would work just fine. Printer paper that you use for your computer printer would also be fine instead of watercolor paper. using the other items will give your students a feel of being a "real" artist b/c of using the "real" art supplies, but substitutions would work just fine and achieve the same results. I do think you should buy a small inexpensive set of oil pastels tho, they are really nice and if you can get them on sale then all your DC could be able to share them! When you get to the air dry clay lessons, you could make your own clay or playdough from a recipe off the internet...just google clay recipes or playdough recipes.

[inashoe]

We really like the variety of projects in Artistic Pursuits. You would only need one set of supplies and your kids could share.

We have also used Mark Kistler's Draw Squad - this was a huge hit, we had a large group of kids ranging from 6 to 18, and they all got a lot out of it. It teaches drawing skills only, all you need is a pencil each and LOTS of paper. All the kids loved this program, the older ones progressed further, the younger ones only went through the first level.