Art History Lessons For Kids

Art is one of those subjects that many homeschool moms find challenging. If she isn’t particularly skilled in art, it can be intimidating. If she feels overwhelmed by all there is to do, it is easy for art to get pushed to the side as less important. So an easy-to-implement and in-depth art curriculum can be very helpful for homeschoolers.

Art History Kids is one such online curriculum. We had the opportunity to try it out and I’d like to share with you everything it has to offer as well as a peek at what Caroline did!

Our family received access to this online program for free for the purpose of this review. I was compensated for my time to write this review. All opinions are my own.

Art History Lessons For Kids

Art History Kids is a fantastic website that provides a thorough art history class for homeschoolers. Each month there is a comprehensive look at an art history theme.

The individual courses are fun and highly engaging for kids.

Art History Kids Online Classes

Art History Kids is a great choice for moms who want to expose their kids to lots of different artists, art techniques, etc. but don’t really know where to start. The online classes are grouped around a theme each month. Because we were writing this review, we had access to several months worth of content. Honestly, there are so many great topics it was hard to choose one.

Caroline looked through everything that was available and decided to do this one – Furry Friends.

(I thought for sure she would choose the class on Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave and Japanese art and printmaking since she is fascinated by all things Japan and that is one of her favorite pieces of art, but she went in another direction.)

Furry Friends is a look at painters and their pets.

This is not totally surprising since her stuffed animals and the involved stories she and David have created about them over the years are a big part of her life. (She also has fish, but they wouldn’t work well in this lesson. LOL!) This is Caroline and Big Bear.

On to the lesson…

So after reviewing the printed materials shown above, it was time to decide which “pets” would be included in the drawing. Caroline decided on her three main stuffed animals – Big Bear, Pedro, and Soldier Bear. She’s very into anime and manga drawing right now so that is what she used. She prefers working with high quality pens and markers more than anything.

The completed sketch/drawing before she added color.

Adding color using markers

And the finished product!

Overall, a really fun lesson theme that Caroline enjoyed!

If there is one “negative” about this for our family, it is the fact that there is a lot of written material and the pages are really packed with info and design. There are videos as part of Art History Kids, but not for every course and every lesson.

As I’ve written many times before when reviewing homeschool curriculum, this is always an issue for us. Too much on the page to process makes things much less attractive for Caroline. All of the materials are so nicely done and will be fantastic for the average homeschool family. But for Caroline it was a bit too much to comfortably and easily read and use.

UPDATE: We decided to use them as read alouds and to guide conversation which works great. We’ve now done several months with various topics and they are working out very well!

Free Art Planner for Subscribers

Art History Kids would like to help you plan with a great free art planner. If you want to ramp up your art instruction for the rest of this school year, you can download a colorful and practical Art Planner. It will help walk you through creating an art plan for your family for January through June.

Of course, the easiest way to do this would be to download the free art planner and then subscribe to Art History Kids for the rest of the year. A nice bonus that comes with membership is that each month you get a code to unlock one of the past courses so you actually get two courses each month!

Have fun with your art studies!