Homeschool Art Appreciation Curriculum

One of the most powerful ways to teach art appreciation is also one of the simplest: Look at great art.

Choose a painting and put it where your children can see it. Give them time to really observe it. Then talk about what they noticed.

• What catches your eye first?
• What colors do you see?
• Where is the light coming from?
• What might be happening outside the frame?
• How does the painting make you feel?
• What do you think the artist wanted us to notice?
• What would you remember if the painting disappeared?

There doesn't always have to be a worksheet. There doesn't always have to be a right answer.

Sometimes the most valuable thing we can do is give children enough time with a masterpiece that they begin making discoveries of their own.

Masterpiece Society Art Appreciation gives you the background, artwork, vocabulary, and thoughtful questions you need to guide those conversations—without turning picture study into another dry academic exercise.

One of my favorite ways to use these studies is to let each student build a personal Art Appreciation Notebook. As you encounter new artists, movements, and masterpieces, your children gradually create their own curated collection.

Add things such as:

• Artist biographies
• Favorite masterpiece prints
• Artist and artwork notebooking pages
• Art movement pages
• Artist quotes
• Narrations and observations
• Art vocabulary
• Colored art templates
• Sketches or artwork inspired by your studies
• Museum postcards or other discoveries

Over time, that ordinary binder becomes something wonderful: a record of your child's growing relationship with art. Instead of completing a worksheet and forgetting it, they're building a keepsake they can return to again and again.

If you follow Charlotte Mason's philosophy, these artist studies can also provide the resources you need for picture study:

• Choose one artist and linger with his or her work over a period of weeks. 
• Study one painting at a time.
• Allow your children to observe carefully and narrate what they remember.
• Read about the artist's life.
• Learn a little about the historical period and artistic movement.
• Notice recurring subjects, techniques, colors, and characteristics until your children begin recognizing the artist's work for themselves.
• You don't need to use every page of the curriculum.

Instead, use the resources as a rich feast from which you can choose what serves your family.

Have a six-year-old, ten-year-old, and teenager? You don't necessarily need three separate art appreciation curricula. Study the same artist together and simply adjust what you expect from each child. 

A younger child can look at the paintings, listen to the stories, participate in discussion, and color or create with one of the printable templates.

An older student can dig deeper into biography, historical context, artistic techniques, vocabulary, narration, notebooking, and independent research.

And everyone can sit together and look at the same masterpiece. That's one of the things that makes art appreciation particularly lovely for homeschool families: It can become part of your family culture rather than simply another subject to complete.

Great art doesn't exist in isolation. Every artist lived somewhere. At some particular moment in history. Among certain ideas, technologies, traditions, conflicts, beliefs, fashions, discoveries, and cultural changes.

• When children study Leonardo da Vinci, they're also stepping into the Renaissance.
• Rembrandt opens a window into the Dutch Golden Age.
• Monet and Degas introduce nineteenth-century France and Impressionism.
• Van Gogh leads naturally into Post-Impressionism.
• Picasso brings students into the revolutionary changes of modern art.
• Georgia O'Keeffe introduces a distinctly American modernist voice.

Suddenly, art appreciation isn't an isolated elective. It becomes another doorway through which your children understand history and humanity.

Masterpiece Society Art Appreciation can be used completely on its own, without elaborate art supplies or hands-on projects. But something interesting often happens when children spend time looking at great art.

They want to make something.

They begin noticing Monet's broken brushstrokes...Van Gogh's swirling lines...Matisse's brilliant color...Picasso's fractured shapes...O'Keeffe's enormous flowers...Rembrandt's dramatic light...

And eventually they begin wondering: “Could I try that?”

That's where art appreciation and art-making beautifully meet.

You can keep your artist study wonderfully simple—or pair it with hands-on Masterpiece Society art lessons inspired by famous artists when your family wants to take the next step.

First we learn to see. Then we're inspired to create.

You don't need to. Really. You don't have to walk into this knowing the difference between Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. You don't have to recognize a Rembrandt. And you certainly don't need to be able to give a lecture on Cubism.

One of the joys of homeschooling is that we get to learn alongside our children.

Read the biography together. Look at the paintings together. Wonder together. Look something up when you're curious. Visit a museum when you have the opportunity and see how many old friends you recognize.

Your job isn't to be the expert. It's to introduce your children to beautiful things and give them the opportunity to really encounter them. I'll give you the resources to help you do it.

You can begin with one artist your family is already curious about or build a broader art appreciation course using multiple artist studies. For a simple first study, choose an artist whose work immediately appeals to your children.

Love beautiful gardens and color? Start with Monet.

Have a child fascinated by Starry Night? Meet Van Gogh.

Studying the Renaissance? Choose Leonardo da Vinci.

Want to explore modern art? Try Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, or O'Keeffe.

Or choose one of the Masterpiece Society Art Appreciation sets and give your family a broader journey through the masters.