Early Elementary K-3, Book 2: Stories of Artists and Their Art Review

I love art appreciation. It is one of those things that I always want to teach but sometimes don’t really know how to. I know there is no right way to teach the arts but a little direction is nice. When I was asked to review  Early Elementary K-3, Book 2: Stories of Artists and Their Art  by a company called ARTistic Pursuits ,  I saw it as that little bit of direction I really was looking for.

As soon as my spiral bound edition got here I opened it up and started looking through it. The lessons are simple and clear. You read about the artist and then there are different art projects to go along with the lesson.  The stories about the artist are easy to read and contain a lot of good information not just about the artist but what was going on in history at the time. Sometimes biographies can be a little dry but not these. I found them interesting and I loved that they were not to long.  My son is not a huge fan of art so short and interesting is really good for him.  I love that he does not just learn about art history but at the same time art techniques. This was an aspect of art appreciation that I had not thought about teaching, mainly because I always thought art appreciation was just about looking at works of art and learning information about them.  This art curriculum helped me pull all of that together in an ease to use way.

I want to share with you my favorite lesson from this curriculum. We did a lot of neat things over the review period but I am going to go with the very first lesson we did. I think is shows some of the really great qualities of this curriculum.

This was a lesson on Giovanni Cimabue ( lesson 1)

We read the lesson about him and then we went on to Project 1 for that lesson.

I really appreciated that they taught how to set up a painting area and how to properly use the watercolor brushes. I bought a cheaper art set for my son to use for this curriculum review but I did let him use some of his sisters really nice paint brushes, so this was really great for him to see how to not ruin the paint brushes. These were all things I never thought about teaching him but really did make the experience so much better (and cleaner)!

For this lesson we went for a walk around our property. We don’t live in a regular neighborhood or in the city so there were no buildings to look at. I told him to just look around and observe what we do have.

He decided that he really liked this part of our property. It is at the very back of our property but it has always been his favorite, so I figured he would pick this part.

We came back up to our outside table and I set up their paints. Of course Charlye wanted to participate which is great when something can work for both. Now obviously I didn’t expect her to learn anything about art technique, but she did get to enjoy the experience with us, which I loved.  

This was his final picture. I was pretty impressed not only with the picture but the fact that he actually took his time on his picture. Jayden usually just rushes through becasue he is not a fan of art or painting so this was a big deal. He also painted it from memory so he did pay attention and was able to recreate it.

I was trying to come up with a quick description of this curriculum and I looked at the cover and it had already done it perfectly for me so I wanted to share it below. This is the perfect description of this curriculum!

I really hope you will go and check out this curriculums website. They have so many different levels  (the one I reviewed was for grades k-3) and have some really great looking other products that can can help you teach art appreciation like a pro! Early Elementary K-3, Book 2: Stories of Artists and Their Art  retails for $47.95. The first time I saw that price I thought it was a little hefty but now that I have the product I think it is worth that. I think I will be buying some of the other workbooks and building a really great art curriculum for the next couple of years!

As always I want to encourage you to go and check out what some of my friends on the Old School House Review Crew had to say about the versions they reviewed and how they used it for their families.  Just click the link below!