Art is a nation’s most precious heritage. For it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which guides us as a nation. And where there is no vision, the people perish.” Lyndon Johnson, on signing into existence the National Endowment on the Arts
As I look ahead at planning our homeschool days for 2015, I have to glance back. Since September, my girls have pushed hard academically. They have made tremendous progress in many areas. I’m so proud of them, but I also see that all of the pushing has made them resistant to learning in some ways. Yet, at the mention of a creative writing or art project, their eyes still light up.
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Padded Journal Project brings smiles and inspires writing.
Clearly, they need more time to be creative.
Creative pursuits need to take a step up on our priority list. I’ve decided to take a look back at our art projects from the past few years for a little inspiration, and as a reminder that I can indeed successfully complete these types of projects with my girls.
The following projects were my daughter’s favorites. Most of the projects were connected to a topic we were studying at the time. Follow the links for the full post on each project.
- Soap Carving / Little House in the Big Woods
- Create a Roman Fresco / Ancient History
- Build A Medieval Castle / Medieval History
- Paper Mache Egyptian Pottery / Egypt History
- Butterfly Tiles / Art in History Holocaust Study
- Make a Padded Journal / Writing
My absolute favorite art “class” from this past year was not connected to any history or literature study. We learned to work with chalk pastels using a guide from Southern Hodgepodge. Here are a few of the results:
I love their season art curriculum. We’ll be using the spring book in the coming months. You can try out one of their free tutorials or have a look at their curriculum here, or by clicking on the image below.
I hope these projects will inspire you to bring more art, creativity and joy into your homeschool days! If you have any suggestions, ideas or art project posts you would like to share, please leave them in the comments section.
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something… That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. -Steve Jobs
