Is your art curriculum too complicated?

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Do you do art? - Part 4 of 6 - Is your art curriculum too complicated! - This is the fourth of a series of interviews with real home school moms on how they integrate art into their week?


Have you ever had that “I Don’t Get It” feeling? I know I certainly have. There is so much information out there on art that it is difficult to make sense of it all.

Your homeschool week is hard enough. Don’t complicate it more with an art program that is difficult to understand! Evaluate what your goals are for adding art to your week. Make sure the lessons you choose meet your goals and are simple to execute.
KEEP IT SIMPLE! I cannot stress this enough. If you do not understand the lessons your children won’t either.

If you are looking for a solution for your weekly art lessons, Fine Art Experience can help. We provide interactive online painting lessons for the home school family. Come check out how we can help you simplify your art lessons and increase the results. How does a self-directed art lesson sound to you?

So here is a question for you, what are your goals for art in your week? What results do you desire?

Post your responses here and let’s talk about it!

P.S. And I guess I am a consistent misspeller! In my haste to get these videos done I failed to catch that college is misspelled as "collage". I guess that is why I am teaching Art and not English!

Do you need to have natural talent to learn to paint?

There is a common assumption that most people take on learning to paint or draw. The assumption is that you must have a “natural talent” to be good at art. Let’s take a deeper look at this assumption and see if we can get to the truth of the matter.

If you walk into a room with a group of 3-5 year old children and you ask them “How many of you can draw?” most of the hands will go up. But, if you ask this same question to a room full of adults not many will raise their hands. What happened?

Our society does not put much weight on creativity in education. We are trained out of our creativity. We are taught that we must learn reading, writing, arithmetic and how to follow the rules but never taught how to think. Thinking is creative by nature. To arrive at an original thought you have to set aside the accepted rules and creatively question the norm.

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day. She was taking a painting class at the local college and her instructor said “Only people with natural talent can learn to be good painters and I can not teach talent”. Well, do you think this is true?

I firmly disagree with this assumption! Painting is a technical art and ANYONE can learn to paint well. All that is needed is a desire, clear instruction on the foundational elements of painting and practice. Now this being said, not everyone will be a professional artist! There is one addition element that is needed to go pro…PASSION!

Learning how to paint is simply learning how to think and question yourself on what you are observing (Critical Thinking Skills). When you have asked the appropriate questions and arrived at their answers, putting the correct color in the correct place is easy.

So if you find yourself believing that only the naturally talented children can learn to paint you might want to rethink your position.

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If you need a resource to help you build critical thinking skills in your children through art, Fine Art Experience can help. Click here to find out how…

Is your Child an Artist?

Do you do art? - Part 3 of 6 - Is your child an artist! - This is the first of a series of interviews with real home school moms on how they integrate art into their week?

As parents we can get caught in the trap of trying to fit our children into a mold. This mold is established in our subconscious through our experiences and education. We all know our children need reading, writing and arithmetic, why, because that is how we were taught.

We are home schooling our children for a reason. We believe the system (public school) is broken and we want a better education for our children. We must be careful not to turn our home school days into a carbon copy of a public school class.

Home schooling give us a wonderful opportunity to give our children exposure to many different things. Through this opportunity we can better understand the special gifts, talents and passions God has given our children and help to mold their education to prepare them to live a life doing what God made them to do.


Is your child and artist? A friend of mine posted a wonderful blog about his appreciation for his mother. Here is a little taste.

"Today, is my mother’s 72nd birthday. I woke up this morning thinking about how great she was when I was a kid.

When I was about five a friend of my parents, Ruth Holmstrom, a home-ec teacher, was over for dinner with her husband Chuck. Mrs. Holmstrom pulled me aside and showed me how to draw a swan starting with the number 2. She told my mother that I had some artistic ability, and within a few weeks mom enrolled me in an after-school art class.

I took about 10 years of private art lessons at the encouragement of my mother. She was always gracious when I came in and asked if I could try something new, not thinking about the expense of new supplies and what a burden it may have been.

As the “art” years added up I came to realize that I didn’t have the talent or drive to flourish as a studio artist, and one day when turning in illustrations for my freshman school yearbook the teacher asked if I would get some pictures of the homecoming parade. I rushed in and rummaged around, then asked my mother where the camera was (it was a weird Minolta 110 camera with a zoom lens). I was hooked! I could be creative and “capture” a moment for everyone to see for all time"

You can read the rest of the post here. John Faught's Blog

Are we preparing our children to live the life God intended or are we training them to just be another employee?

If you would like to give your children the opportunity to experience fine art in their school week Fine Art Experience can help. Click here get your FREE painting lessons and to find out more about our program...