Dec. 11, 2008 - Spears Art Studio
I love when a curriculum comes out that can be used for several years especially when you have multiple children and need to save money. I also like it when the curriculum comes on a disk because that saves space and like most homeschoolers my bookshelves are already filled to the brim! So this curriculum really fit the bill and it's called Spears Art Studio. I was blessed to be able to try the K-8, yes that's right you can use this from kindergarten through the 8th grade! and my children liked it and I liked it as well. You don't have to print if you don't want to (I did) so that saves on ink and everything you need to know is given to you with no guess work needed. Even the ground work has been laid so you know what other extra books you may want to borrow from the library or look up online, best of all it's Christian!!!
Here is what Spears Art Studio has to offer for the K-8th grade:
- -consists of a main theme (seasonal and holiday recognition included) for each instructional week of the school year with one or more activities for each grade level based on that main theme adressing art elements, art principles, design elements, etc.
- -expanded Scripture integration
- -color format with color illustrations (on CD-Rom in PDF)
- -269 art activities (many new and revised)
- -core curriculum connections
- -137 patterns and posters
- -498 instructional pages
- -analyzed for National Visual Art Standards and TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills)
Spears offers the curriculum up to high school level for private and home schools. The curriculum supports grammar, dialetic and rhetoric stages of Classical education. Here is what is included for the scope of the K-8 as well as the high school level of Spears Art Studio:
- Recognition of the basic elements of art: line, shape, space, color, form, texture
- Recognition of the basic principles of art: repitition/pattern, proportion, contrast/value, emphasis/focal point, balance/symmetry/assymetry, unity, variety, harmony, movement/force/rhythm
- Academic and visual/eye-hand coordination skills
Cognitive skills (higher order thinking skills, Bloom's taxonomy) - Art history connections
- Contemporary art connections
- Scripture integration
- Analyzed for National Visual Arts Standards
The cost to recieve Spears Art Studio K-8 Christian Art Curriculum, a Teacher's Manual on PDF CD-Rom is $39.95. For one child, for 8 years of art this would be less than $5.00. If you factor in using this for more than one child then the cost goes down still more! What a great resource for the homeschooling family to use! Supplies used are usually what you already have on hand so there isn't much of an expense for supplies.
Spears Art Studio also offers the high school curriculum, Calligraphy, and children's literature comprehension guides. The high school curriculum is $29.95, the Calligraphy CD-Rom is $14.95 and the workbook series is $24.95 (good for 5th grade through adult and pages may be reproduced) and the comprehension guides on CD-Rom PDF are $16.95 (four comprehension guides on disk, these are for the books: Moutain Born, Noah Webster; a Man Who Loved Words, Mr. Poppers Penguins and Stuart Little.
There are sample pages available at the Spears Art Studio website. Please check it out if you'd like to see what I am reviewing here for yourself.
