What's So Important About Art?

I remember making pottery ashtrays in elementary school. I remember wilted, dried apple witch heads. We made pinch pots and wove simple baskets and dipped candles and painted. Every week was a new lesson with a final product to show for it. 

Imagine my disappointment when my children went to public school and art class consisted of coloring in printed coloring sheets with Crayola crayons! Art was crap, plain and simple. It's one of the programs first to be cut when budgets tighten. 

Lucky for Bay, she's in high school, and those art programs are pretty terrific. Tuna, though, is in fifth grade, and if I were to put her in public school, she'd be coloring (she hates coloring) every week. 

creating a chalk pastel pumpkin, courtesy of a HodgePodge.me tutorial

What happened to placing importance on the fine arts? It is important to be exposed to the fine arts. Why? Here are a few reasons:

1. Making art boosts self-esteem. 
2. Art helps develop critical thinking. 
3. Art exposure and making art help encourage creative problem solving. 
4. Art is stress-reducing. 
5. It's just plain good for you!
6. It's fun and rewarding!

It's not hard to incorporate art into a homeschool environment. You don't have to be an artist to enjoy or teach art! You just have to have an open mind, a willingness to try new things, and some good directions. There are lots of ways to find art instruction online. 

Our art wall display for autumn, so far. 

Pinterest is full of ideas. If you're a visual person, seeing a thumbnail of a project might give you great ideas. Of course, clicking on it and opening will most often lead you to detailed instructions on how to complete the projects.

Hodge Podge has free (and paid) lessons in chalk pastels and acrylics that we have been enjoying. 

DickBlick.com has tons of project plans available free of charge. 

Haiku

We've been learning about China, Japan, and Korea this week, and we each composed a haiku, then illustrated them. I love how they turned out. Tuna, after this experience, thinks haiku is boring because it doesn't typically rhyme. Still, I think she did a great job writing one.

I like mine, too. Where's my gold star? 

A Lesson on Chalk Pastels

Tuna and I followed a tutorial layed out by HodgePodge to create medieval castles with chalk pastels. This was our first time using pastels, and this looked like an easy start. 

It's very messy, but it's fun, and it looks cool when it's done. HodgePodge has lots of tutorials for both chalk pastels and acrylics that are easy to follow if you're not artsy in that way. 

Along with some tutorials at DickBlick.com, some art museum trips, and lots of free art time, we will be using HodgePodge art tutorials to get a bit of art in our weeks this year. 

When we finished, Tuna made a Minecraft picture with the pastels.