Art Education for the Home School

Covering all of the subjects taught in a traditional school can be a daunting task for the home schooling parent. Obviously, the big core subjects like math, English, and science bring with them a wealth of home school literature, lessons, and activities available for purchase. However, other subjects, without such available resources, can easily fall through the cracks. Art is one such subject. Being an art educator myself, it pains me to see what could be valuable and meaningful lessons learned through art turned into simple craft classes by my home schooling friends. According to them, they do not want to simply make a traced hand turkey, they just don't have the resources to teach meaningful and culturally relevant art lesson. So, I am here to do something about that. Below you will find the first of, hopefully, many simple but effective art education lessons appropriate for the home school environment.

To begin using art as an educational tool as opposed to just a fun class, you must first know the building blocks of the subject. These building blocks, known as the elements of art, are the pieces that make up every artwork in existence. A good analogy is the elements of art are like words in a sentence. Depending on which words you choose and what order you put them in, you can create many different sentences with many different meanings. So is the case with the elements. Depending on which elements you chose and how you put them together, you can create endless different artworks with endless different meanings. The elements of art are line, shape, form, texture, color, value and space. All art education should begin with this foundation. Below are two lessons with which to get started: an intro to the elements of art and the first element, line. In subsequent articles, I will cover the remaining art elements two at a time with lessons that teach and visually reinforce each term.

ELEMENTS OF ART

Definition -- the basic components or building blocks of every artwork. They are line, shape, form, color, value, texture and space.