Alternative to Creating a Masterpiece?

My kids love art, so we are actually using a few art programs.  Harmony Fine Arts includes picture study, composer study, and art.  There are two different “paths”.  One schedules in a variety of books each year using things like Draw Squad, a kid’s watercolor book, and polymer clay.  The 2nd path (and you can do both if you wish) schedules in Artistic Pursuits.  We haven’t used this program yet, but it’s very popular.  My oldest will be using their high school book next year.  There are also “copywork” lessons with the picture study where your DC pick an aspect of the painting or make a copy of the painting in a medium of their choice.  This program seems to fall between classical and Charlotte Mason methods because it seems a bit heavier than the Charlotte Mason programs tend to be.

The 2nd resource we use is Drawspace.com.  They have many free lessons or you can subscribe to have access to all of them.  The free lessons would keep your DC busy for quite awhile!

Another resource is chalkpastels.com.  They have lots of free lessons & videos or you can buy their e-books.  We will be starting this in the fall, and it looks really great!  If you download their free book, there should be a coupon code inside.

Our final “art” area is practical geometry.  You can do more math-heavy books for this topic, but ours are part math/part art.  We use Paper Sloyd for the Primary Grades from the public domain.  My DC have measured, cut, and folded a variety of paper models like baskets, boxes, fans, pinwheels, and bookmarks.  All you need are some fun scrapbook papers, a hole punch, glue, and some baker’s twine or other string.  The other book we use here is Compass Drawing.  They each have a geometry set to use with the book.

We actually start our day with art, so we use a different program each day.  It’s probably a bit too much for most families, but my kids can’t get enough of it.  lol

Another vote for Artistic Pursuits. We love the combination of art history, gentle art technique (which gets more focused as the books move on into the older grades), and picture study. It’s a more “intense” study than the usual CM art study, in the sense that each lesson introduces a new artist and art piece rather than studying one per term, but we’re okay with that. It’s very easy to use, especially since the supply list is all in one spot in the beginning, so you can gather everything you need before you start.

Artistic Pursuits uses a great variety of techniques, and you can use it starting in preschool, if you’d like. There’s one preschool book, three books for K – 3, two for 4 – 6th, two for junior high and two for high school. If you look at their website (not sure I can post a link here, but it’s ArtisticPursuits dot com) you can look at samples and read all about it. As long as you have your supplies, it’s an “open and go” curriculum. You just read it, discuss the picture, do the project. You can take more than one day to do those things, too. I think it’s “meant” for a 2x a week use, but you could use it more or less frequently as you prefer.