5 Resources to Add Beauty to your Homeschool Curriculum this Year

This post is sponsored by Homeschool Buyers Co-Op.  I have been compensated for my time and have not been required to write a positive review.


You've researched your options, written your lesson plans, and your books are lined up neatly on the shelves.  You've got it, mama!  You are ready to start this new school year!

Can I ask you a quick question before you begin?

Have you included any resources in your homeschool curriculum this year that will nourish your child's soul?  Are you purposely choosing books, pictures, and other materials that will help guide your child into appreciating beauty?

If you think you may have neglected this aspect of your curriculum, or if you just want to add more beauty to your day, never fear because I have some great options to share with you!

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Music for your Homeschool

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HomeSchoolPiano

Let's start with a FREEBIE!  You can try out HomeSchoolPiano for free until the end of the month (August 31, 2017).  Developing the skills of listening to, mimicking, and creating music are essential to guiding your child toward the appreciation of beauty.  If your child is not already taking piano lessons, definitely check HomeSchoolPiano out while it's free!

A FREE Membership to HomeSchoolPiano includes:

Access to ALL lessons, unlimited viewing of the lessons on any device, up to 5 students per household can use the site, sheet music, mp3s and other lesson files, jam tracks to play along with, and bonus material

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Maestro Classics

Maestro Classics...This is one I've had my eye on for a long time.  A mix of story, beautiful music, and learning.  Sounds perfect to me!

"Stories in Music™  is a classical music series for children & families written for narrator and orchestra. Filled with fun stories and musical explanations, they are designed to help your  family cultivate a love of music through education and  joyful performances, expand and develop  listening skills, and encourage families to listen together."

Each CD Set Includes

• An enchanting story set to great music
• Superb recordings by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
• Educational tracks describing the creation of the music, composers' lives, musical composition, and more
• A 24 page activity booklet

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Art for your Homeschool

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Mark Kistler's Online Art Lessons

I am always amazed at what my children can draw when they are following step by step instructions.  These lessons are just that, and will help your child think critically and view the world through a different perspective.

300+ Drawing Lessons: Video drawing lessons, Step by Step animated lessons, games and more. Plus, Mark's team is adding new courses and content all the time.

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Home Art Studio

Home Art Studio is great because it goes beyond just drawing skills to teach many different types of art techniques.  You child will be able to add beauty to your home with their creations!

Watch this great little video that shows lots of examples of what your children will learn.

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Art Appreciation for Middle and High Schoolers

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Circle of Scholars by Professor Carol

I heard Professor Carol once at a homeschool conference, and her love for the arts was infectious!

Current curriculum focuses so much on math, science, language arts, etc., but we are missing out nourishing an entire portion of our being when we neglect to appreciate and engage in the arts.

Professor Carol argues that we also miss out on understanding much of the other subjects when we neglect the arts.  That is why she made this course.

• Discovering Music: 300 Years of Western Music, Arts, History, and Culture. Our flagship course covering the history of music from approximately 1600 to 1914.
• Early Sacred Music: History from the Jerusalem Temple to 1400 featuring performances of ancient music, Gregorian chant, and Medieval polyphony.
• America's Artistic Legacy: American History finds expression in the incredible richness of America’s music, art, drama, and literature.
• Imperial Russia: From ancient bells and chant to the Romanticism of Tchaikovsky, a course on Russia’s distinctive history and culture.

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If you are still looking for even more curriculum ideas for your homeschool, I encourage you to browse the rest of the Homeschool Buyers Co-Op site!

The Homeschool Buyers Co-op has an award-winning selection of electives, including typing programs, health curriculum, driver’s education, foreign language learning, arts and music programs, critical thinking programs, and more.

Electives (Electives, Art & Music, Foreign Languages, Thinking & Other Skills, etc.) – Savings up to 89%

Summer Scholé - Taking Learning Outside

I'm a big believer in learning in year round learning.  Of course the type of learning and even the setting can look different, but we shouldn't just turn our brains off during the summer!

In the spring and summer months, I love to take learning outside as much as possible.  If you are looking for ideas for how to have a restful, soul enriching time of learning as the weather warms up,  read on!

Gather Your Group and Find Your Setting

We had a great group last year that was comprised of 4 families.  There were 8 actively participating children, ranging in ages 8 down to 3.

I made a flyer to share with others what our group was about.  I printed these out (1 sheet, front and back) and handed them out to a few families that I thought might be interested in joining us.  In case it might be helpful for you, here is what I came up with:

We picked a very large park to meet at.  It was a place where we could always find a place that wasn't being occupied by others so they wouldn't distract us and we wouldn't bother them =)

The year before, I had families over to my backyard for our summer learning, so don't feel limited by your choices of local parks, just be creative and pick any outside setting that will work for you!

Choose Your Subjects

We settled on covering three subjects each week.  You can choose anything that would be conducive to learning in a group and being outside.  We did poetry, nature study (birds), and art.

Poetry

I led the poetry portion, which I absolutely loved!  Each week I planned a new poem to memorize, a fun way to learn about poetry, and made copywork to send the kids home with so they could practice during the week.  

For instance, the first week, I read a poem called Alphabet Stew.  As I was reading it, I had the children reach into a bag of alphabet tiles and 'mix' them (like a pot of stew) while I read the poem.  Then I read a poem called The Ant and pulled letters out of our alphabet stew to make the rhyming words at the end of each line.  

Another week, we read a poem called Talents Differ.  It is a story about a little girl looking out her window and seeing a bird making a nest and getting ready to lay her eggs.  The poem is a conversation going back and forth between the girl and the bird, so I had the children pair up, one being the bird and one being the girl.  They got to act the poem out while saying their lines.

If you are interested, I could write a separate post outlining exactly what I taught each week.  If you want to read more about general ideas for teaching young children poetry, I wrote a post on the iHomeschool Network blog about that, so check it out!

Art

Another one of the moms led the art section.  She picked out a different artist for each week and brought examples of their work for the children to look at.  She would read a picture book about the artist or share information about their life and style.  Then she had an art project that corresponded to the artist for the week.  The project would mimic the artist's style in some way.  

The children used swirls to make a starry night like Van Gogh, they used wild flowers to create blurry nature paintings like Rembrandt, they used chalk on the ground to make BIG, up close flower paintings like O'Keefe, dipped their hands in paint to mimic Worhol's style, and more!

Nature Study

For the last subject of the day, we got to move around and really observe nature.  Another one of the moms led us in our study of birds.  Each week she would come with information to share about a different type of bird.  She would read the children a story about birds, have the children color a picture of the bird of the week, show them what the bird sounds like, etc.

The first week, she had the children make pretend binoculars using two toilet paper tubes and set them each up with a little notebook, pencil, and a simple one page bird guide.  Then each week after she shared about the particular bird of the week, she would send them to different spots to watch for birds and draw what they saw in their notebooks.  The children loved it and it was such a nice way to encourage a love of nature.

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So what are your plans for this summer?  Do you take a full summer break or do you find ways to keep the learning alive?  I would love to hear what you have in mind!  We are getting ready to have another Summer Scholé time like we did last year and I can't wait!

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This week only, you can find amazing resources at a deep discount to help you with your Charlotte Mason plans for this summer and next year!

Put a Piece of Art up in Your Home - Scholé Everyday

This post contains affiliate links to products I recommend!

Thanks for coming back another day of our month of Scholé Everyday!   If you missed the first post which explains what's going on, take a minute to read it.  Remember, these are just going to be short posts with an idea to encourage you in the way of restful learning.


Today my encouragement to you is to:

Put a Piece of Art up in Your Home

I was struck when I heard Dr. Perrin talk about contemplating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.  One thing he said is that in order to encourage your kids to do this, you have to place good, true, and beautiful things in front of them!  Makes sense, doesn't it?  He said that if your kids are bored, it just means that they are not contemplating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.  Brilliant!  So, let's get started and give our kids something to contemplate!

When I first thought of bringing art into my home, my first thought was that it would be expensive and that would be difficult because I am pretty cheap.  (Dr. Perrin also talked about how sometimes it is worth spending money on things that will enrich our souls even though they don't have any real tangible worth.)  You might be thinking the same thing, so I wanted to share some ideas with you for how you can get art in your home pretty cheaply.

• Buy poster prints of fine art and frame them.  I recently bought about 6 of them for just a few dollars each.  The frame was the most expensive part, but you might have one at home already.  Here is one that I have up in my home right now: Van Gough Turquoise Almond Branches in Bloom

• Go to a bookstore (preferably a used bookstore, well, or amazon now that I think of it) and look for large books of art.  Find one filled with big pictures, cut them out and frame them!  I have this big Norman Rockwell book from my parents, and I recently found an O'Keefe  book in the used section of Barnes and Noble.  

•  Calendars!  I've started to see calendars in the stores again.  Look for a fine arts one, or one of one specific artist's work, and cut out the pictures. (Here's an example of one from Renoir.)  These may not be huge, but you could put them in a smaller frame to sit on an end table or at your child's school table.  Then switch out the picture each week.

Do you have fine art up in your home?  What are you tips for encouraging your kids to contemplate beautiful things?  This is not something that comes naturally to me, but like I mentioned, I've spent a few dollars on some prints, and I'm hoping that will be a good start!  My hope is to change the pictures up about every month, so my family will have a variety of artists to admire throughout this year.

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If you are purposing to incorporate scholé into your home this year, I'd love to hear from you!  Share with me what you are doing or how these ideas have impacted your homeschool and I can compile your stories in to a post.  I'd love to even have some guest bloggers if you'd like to write a whole post about how you are using scholé in your homeschool this year!  Contact me and let me know how you are doing!

Drawing with Children Review

If there is one drawing book that I see consistently on homeschool curriculum sites, it's Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes. I am not anything of an artist myself, so I thought this would be a good one for me to check out. When it came in the mail, I pretty much sat down and read it cover to cover. It is a wonderful resource for any teacher (or mom!) who is going to be instructing children in drawing.

It talks about setting the stage for drawing, having the right attitude, and what kind of materials to use. The biggest point of the book is teaching children to not look at whole pictures (because that would be very daunting!), but to look at each individual type of line that makes up the picture. Drawing is nothing more than putting lots of small lines/shapes together.

 

Drawn by my 5 year old

Read my full review at The Curriculum Choice!

Kindergarten Arts...Take Two

This post contains affiliate links to products we use and love!

This week I am taking the time to talk about how I teach each subject and also what changes I am making for the rest of the year.  If you didn't read the Classical Kindergarten...Take Two intro post, take a minute to read that first so you understand why I am making some changes for the rest of the year.

 How we have been incorporating the arts

This is one subject that isn't so concrete in our homeschool, so we are not really making any specific changes.  What I do want, is to try to spend more time with all aspects of the arts.  This is especially important to me because my daughter shows strong interest in art and music and I want to make sure to give her ample time and resources to do these things.  She is just 3 years old now, but she loves to watch YouTube videos of people playing classical music, which has caused her to be obsessed with the violin =)  It's pretty much all she talks about and she walks around most of the day with two red sticks pretending to play.  I told her that if she shows a little responsibility with a toy guitar we got her for Christmas that we could get her a violin for her birthday.  Here is a video of her playing her 'violin' and singing Hark! the Herald Angles Sing...

So for the sake of my music-loving daughter (and because I know it's good for everyone), we include all kinds of art in our homeschool.  I've written about most of it before.  Here are some of the posts:

Preschool SQUILT (Super Quiet Listening Time)

Harmony Fine Arts

Another look at specifically how we use Harmony Fine Arts.

 

How we use Music for Little Mozarts to learn piano and musical concepts.

I haven't written anything about it yet but we been learning to draw with Mona Brookes' Drawing with Children.

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How I Teach Art Appreciation to Classical Preschoolers

Art appreciation is a great thing to work into any homeschool child's studies, even preschoolers!  One of the best things about art appreciation is that it can be a completely no-pressure subject.  It is a nice break from the routine of math, spelling, reading, (repeat).

This year my kids are 5 and 3 years old.  I am trying to incorporate art appreciation into our studies once a week.  My goals are simply: exposure to great art and increased observation skills.  Perhaps these goals will change as my children grow, but for now this is a wonderful, simple activity for us.  I hope you will give it a try too!

We use the Grade 1 Overview Year from my sponsor, Harmony Fine Arts, for our art appreciation.  It offers lots of great options for you to do as little or as much art appreciation as you want!

First of all, in my theme of trying to keep the paper clutter down this year, I made a Fine Arts notebook for each of my kids.  I'm in love with my super-simple spiral binding tool and honestly use it every chance I get.  I have a post dedicated to it, so hop over there and check it out if you need a simple {and cheap} way to keep your kid's work together too!

The notebook consists of all the pieces of art that Harmony Fine Arts includes in their curriculum, printed back to back with one of the notebooking pages that is included in the ebook.  Each two page spread looks something like this:

Ok, now on to how we actually do art appreciation...

Observation

The first step is observation.  I simply set the picture in front of my kids and ask them to look at it quietly for a minute.  For little kids, a minute is seriously all they need.  I find that my kids have a hard time keeping their thoughts in their head, so this simple exercise takes discipline!

I ask them to look at things like colors, shapes, what is the picture of, and what is in the background.  After they look quietly, I ask them to share what they say.  Usually they will say simple things like "There are apples in the picture." or "It was red and brown."  I usually like to take the picture away when I have them tell me what they saw.  This makes them think and remember, not just look down again and say what they see.

Barb, from Harmony Fine Arts recently shared {free} Printable Art Question Cards to use along with her curriculum or any art you are studying.  The are simply a series of questions that help you ask your child about different aspects of the picture they are looking at.  Sometimes I just don't know what else to look at in a picture, and these cards are really helpful.

Imitation

Next is imitation.   As you can see above, I actually print two of the same picture on each page in the notebook.  One is in full color, and the other is in a lightened black and white (I just change this is Word under 'format picture').

Preschool aged children are most likely not able to draw or paint anything that would resemble the original picture.  This black and white picture lets them feel like they are re-creating the original work.  I treat it like a coloring page, and ask my kids to pay careful attention to try to coloring in the right places and with the right colors.

My son really doesn't have the time of day for coloring, so I don't make him color the whole picture.  I just want to see him exert some effort =)  My daughter is a little more of a free spirit, so it's harder to contain her to using the right colors and using them in the right places.  I don't sweat it.  Art appreciation is meant to be fun and inspiring, not tiresome and aggravating.

Narration

After that I have my children do a simple narration.  Once again, I make them do this without looking at the picture.  Narration is hard in general.  It is a skill to be learned, and using this skill while thinking about art takes some extra thinking (in my opinion).  I use this time to help my children learn to describe things in complete sentences and to use their recollection skills again.

The picture above is what my son had to say about the art he had just looked at and colored.  He speaks his narration and I write it down.  I try to let the kids say whatever they want, without critiquing it or making too many suggestions.  I will just chime in if they say things like, "Ummm...she had a green shirt....mom and baby....washing feet." and try to help them form good sentences.

Just like in the imitation portion, this narration shouldn't be frustrating for the child or the parent.  It is just to get the child thinking about something they might not otherwise think of.  Let the child speak his thoughts and you capture them on paper.  My kids always love to have me read back to them what they 'wrote.'  It's like their own little story =)

Replication

Last is replication.  Let you child become the artist!  I ask my children to try to draw the picture themselves.  Of course their replication won't be much like the original, but it helps them learn to pay attention to detail and practice getting messages from their brains to their hands.  As long as I see effort, I am happy.

In the example above, I had my kids just replicate the part of the picture with the basin of water.  The round part is the basin and those things sticking out to the right are the little girl's feet.  Looks good to me!  I can tell that he even tried to show the rim of the basin and the water inside.  Good effort, son!

Of course every child is going to be at a different ability level for each of these exercises.  Maybe my son's work looks amazing to you...or maybe it looks awful!  The great thing about art appreciation and preschoolers is that it doesn't really matter =)  Let your child explore great works of art.  Help them learn to pay attention to detail and learn to express what they see.

Trying to copy great works of art (no matter how simply your child does it) is a wonderful exercise for a classical education.  The thrust of the grammar stage is soaking in information and learning from what has already been done.  Observing what other artists have created will give your child the tools they need to one day create masterpieces of their own!

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This post is a part of the "How I Teach" link-up at the iHomeschool Network.

5 Reasons Artist Study Should be a Part of Your Classical Education

Today I am excited to have Barb, from my sponsor Harmony Fine Arts, here to share with you why you should include studying artist, especially in your classical homeschool!  Barb recently graduated her last homeschool student, and always has an incredible amount of wisdom to share.  For more great homeschool inspiration, you can visit her blog, Harmony Art Mom.  Don't miss the BIG coupon code at the end of the post!

5 Reasons Artist Study Should be a Part of Your Classical Education

1) Exposure to great art and artists creates texture to your history study.   

As you work through your history plans, make sure to include artists and their artwork in your week.  Learning about artists in a chronological way makes sense and ties many aspects of history and culture together.

2) There is no right or wrong answer.

Art is a time that everyone can express themselves without fear of 'messing up.'  Sharing thoughts and emotions about great art is a wonderful way to help your children learn to express themselves in words and new vocabulary, too.

3) Artist study balances out the more academic subjects.

Exercising the left part of the brain is beneficial to developing the whole person.  Artist study doesn't need to be another heavy course in your homeschool.  Keep it light and fun.

4) Art refreshes the creative spirit.

Nothing will inspire you more than viewing great art.  As your children learn about different styles of art, they will pick a favorite.  Don't be surprised if you see your child creating artwork in that style.

5) It simply provides an enjoyable way for you and your children to spend time together.

A few minutes each week spent viewing paintings together will be something that you look forward to as you gain confidence.  You can share your knowledge of art with your child or just share an enthusiasm for art, learning right alongside them.

Harmony Fine Arts Can Help!

If you need help getting started with chronological artist and composer study, please click over and learn more about Harmony Fine Arts.  I created the yearly plans to go along with our family's classically inspired homeschool.  Each year* includes artist study plans that bring great art to your home with little preparation on your part.  The Harmony Fine Arts ebook plans have clickable links to 4-6 paintings per artist along with additional art appreciation and art skill options to round out your year's art curriculum.

*Grade 5 features Ancient Art and you do view artwork for each time period, but no specific artists.

I am offering a big 25% discount coupon code for individual ebook plans to readers here at Living and Learning at Home for the next week. Use code JULY25 until 7/22/13 to receive your discount!

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Barb has homeschooled her four children for the past 15 years, graduating her last child this past year!  She uses an eclectic style of homeschooling, flavored with a Classical/Charlotte Mason style to emphasize the arts and sciences.  She is the owner of Harmony Fine Arts and the organizer of the Outdoor Hour Challenges.

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Harmony Fine Arts Giveaway!

It has been my privilege over the past few months to get to know Barb from Harmony Fine Arts.  She has been a faithful contributor to Trivium Tuesdays here at Living and Learning at Home each week and through that I have gotten to be encouraged and inspired by her posts!  While on her blog, I noticed that she has a fine arts curriculum.  I had been eying it for a while, so when she offered me a copy to use and review, and another to giveaway, I was so excited!

A Little Bit About It

First off, Harmony Fine Arts is a curriculum that incorporates both viewing great art pieces and listening to great music and she has a curriculum for each year of your child's schooling.

What I love most is that it is designed to go along with your history studies.  Each grade's curriculum goes along with a particular time period, cycling through again as your child grows.  Each one has a suggested grade, but just jump in at whichever time period you are studying.

• Grade 1 - Overview
• Grade 2 - Medieval and Renaissance
• Grade 3 - Late Renaissance to Early Modern Art
• Grade 4 - Modern Times
• Grade 5 - Ancient Art and the Orchestra
• Grade 6 - Medieval and Renaissance
• Grade 7 - Late Renaissance to Early Modern Art
• Grade 8 - Modern Era
• High School Music and Art Plans

Harmony Fine Arts compiles lots of art and music pieces into a logical order of study and then offers many resources and ideas for how to study and learn from the pieces.  I love this quote from the website:

Harmony Fine Arts plans organize great art and music appreciation resources into the classical four-year cycle of history and seasons each week with a Charlotte Mason flavor.

What I Love About It

I know nothing about fine arts.  I hate to admit that, but it was sadly just not a focus in my education growing up.  I love that Harmony Fine Arts takes care of that!  I would not know where to begin or what to look for when teaching my children about the fine arts.  This curriculum brings so many pieces together and shares so many options of study which is wonderful!

I also love that it is not a scripted type of curriculum.  I always really enjoy freedom and flexibility when I teach my children.  I love getting ideas from other people, but implementing them the way that I want to.  This is exactly what Harmony Fine Arts offers.  Each curriculum is 32-36 weeks long, but you can really do as little or as much of it as you want.  Each lesson has three options, (and resources to go along with each) but you can choose to do just one or study a particular piece more in depth and do all three. 

I love that each art and music piece is linked to a place on the internet where you can view or listen to it.  This makes life so much easier!   There are also select pictures of art included right in curriculum.  You certainly could purchase art books to view the pieces and CDs to listen to the music, but you don't have to!  I have just been printing put the pieces as we go along, but you could even just have your children look at the art on the computer or an e-reader.

Perhaps my most loved aspect of Harmony Fine Arts is that is that it fits right in with the classical model of teaching.  I love to fit as many subjects as possible in with our history spine, so it makes perfect sense to study the art and music from the time period of history that you are studying.  Now, you could spend hours and hours researching this all yourself, finding appropriate artists and composers, finding examples of their work, making notebooking pages, and coming up with activities to go along with each one, but you don't have to because it has been done for you!  And for the very reasonable price, it is quite worth it!

How We Use It

When Barb (the creator of Harmony Fine Arts) first asked me about reviewing this curriculum, I was hesitant because my oldest child is only 4.  I didn't know if it would be appropriate for us at this time, but she pointed me to a few posts on her blog about using the curriculum with younger children and so I decided to give it a try!  Here is an example of how we have been using the Grade 1 - Overview curriculum.

First I have him  observe the picture.  We talk about the title and artist.  I encourage him to tell me about everything he is seeing.  We talk about the colors, subjects, feelings, etc.  Then I have him (and little sister, who always likes to be a part of what we are doing!) color in a coloring page version of the picture.  I have sometimes had him try to do this from memory and other times just by copying from the original.  At his age, I'm mostly just trying to help him take care that his actually trying to color in particular places instead of just scribbling wherever.  He doesn't color the entire thing completely, but he does a good job picking out things to color in.

Next, I print out one of the notebooking pages.  This time I take the picture out of his site and have him tell me about it.  At his age, I am mostly looking for complete sentences and ideas that are relevant to the subject matter.  Sometimes I help him formulate his thoughts, but usually I just copy what he tells me.  He is always thrilled to hear me read what to him what he has dictated =) I could have him write this himself, but I know about how much his hand can take and don't want make him discouraged just because I'm forcing him to do too much pencil gripping!

After we write our description, I have him try to draw what he remembers of the picture.  This is difficult for him, but I have seen him improve which is encouraging =)  Drawing isn't his favorite thing, so I do not expect intricate pictures, just enough to see that he is using his brain to remember what he looking at.

Then I put it into a binder so we can remember what we have learned!  I really enjoy this process.  I love that it stretches his brain to pay attention and remember what he has seen.  I love that it encourages him to think of descriptive words and put them together into sentences.  We do not always complete this in one day, sometimes we come back to it on another day to finish it up.  And remember, this is just one example of how we have chosen to use Harmony Fine Arts.  Depending on the age and interests of your children, you could do like we have done, modify it, or choose one of the other options of study!

How You Can  Get It

If this looks like something that would benefit your family, there are a few ways that you can try it for yourself!

First, make sure that you enter the giveaway below to win a complete year's curriculum for yourself!  You can choose the year that would be of most use to you.

Next, you can try lots of different freebies that are offered at Harmony Fine Arts.  You can view sample pages from each of the years.  If you have a child in the Rhetoric stage, you can download select ebooks completely for free (9th grade music appreciation,  10th grade music appreciation, 11th grade music appreciation, 12th grade music appreciation, and 12th grade music appreciation.)  You can also find lots of great ideas and freebies on her blog and pinterest pages.

Also, if you would like to purchase something from Harmony Fine Arts, from now until December 10th you can use discount code "Living and Learning" to get 25% off your order!  (If this code gives you any trouble, please let me or Barb know and we will get it worked out for you.)


Now for the giveaway!  One winner will be chosen and will receive the curriculum year of their choice in ebook format.  Simply leave a blog post comment (and click "I commented!" on the Raffelcopter below) to enter, and make sure to follow me and Harmony Fine Arts in other ways to increase your entries!

This giveaway is over.  Thanks to all who entered!

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