Art Basics for Children

Visual Mann Programs, written by Sharon Jeffus, are more than just learning art basics. Tied in with this program is art appreciation, vocabulary skills, a bit of core subjects, and more! Her goal is “to provide educational materials for children to make them feel good about who they are. I want them to love learning and view it as an exciting discovery… All children can benefit from finding their place to shine in the arts and can feel good about who God created them to be.”

Preschool and Elementary Art Basics teaches art appreciation and implements concepts into fun, easy, and simple projects that young children will enjoy and learn from. This art curriculum contains 10 art lessons for kids, covering Center of Interest, Positive/Negative Space, Lines, Expressions, Shapes, Six Colors of the Color Wheel, Patterns, Eight Ways to Draw a Bird, Nine Ways to show Scale, and Ten Ways to Draw Structures.

Visual Manna’s Complete Art Curriculum is an insightful art program that both the teacher and students can learn from. It gives a broad overview of different types of art, concepts, materials, and techniques through a series of 45 lessons. Due to the broadness of this program, there isn't a lot of depth - rather, it's more of a wonderful introduction to the many facets of art. There is heavy emphasis on the use of recycled materials. The lesson narrative explains the new concepts being presented. Then, an art project is suggested for children in grades 1-6 and another for older children grades 7-12 (usually several ideas for each range). These have the students putting into immediate practice the concepts they've just learned.

The Art Through the Core package includes all the "Teaching... Through Art" books, which help teach core subjects through art. The package is available on CD (PDF format) or in a looseleaf printed bundle. The package includes: Teaching Science Through Art, Teaching American History Through Art, Teaching Social Studies Through Art, Teaching Math Through Art, Teaching English Through Art, Teaching History Through Art, and their newest release, Teaching Astronomy Through Art. Subjects are also available individually on our website. Please see the individual items for more details on each book. Please note that you will need Adobe Reader to use the CDs; it is available to download for free at www.adobe.com.

Art Adventures in Narnia features crafts and projects that highlight the characters from the Chronicles of Narnia series. In 56 pages, Sharon offers a variety of ways students can apply their own creativity to the subjects of Narnia, whether it be through pencil and paper, paint, clay, cardboard, or a craft project. Subjects examined are lions, heraldry, knights, armor, weapons, crowns, thrones, portraits, printing, rabbits, beavers, gargoyles, fauns, stags, trees, castles, birds, ancient writing, dragons, unicorns, and maps. Along the way, Sharon mixes in art concepts, including perspective, shading, using a grid, scale, and positive and negative space. Because the topics are chosen from the Narnia books, this is not a cohesive art program; rather, it's set up as a book you can wander through as you read through the Narnia books, choosing topics that suit your fancy.

Master Drawing covers shading, texture, proportion, perspective, and drawing people, buildings and more. Also included are lessons on using grids, rhythm and value, and drawing motion, still life, animals, landscapes, cartoons, and caricatures. As a special treat, a section that features many field sketches of birds by renowned bird artist David Plank is included in the animals section. Other very helpful lessons include using creativity and how to concentrate on what you are seeing as you draw - both important for the serious sketcher. Lessons are open-ended and easy to understand while covering all the basics, such as the face being five eyes wide, and how to find a vanishing point to draw accurate perspective drawings. This could be implemented with a group of budding artists, or for the older or more driven art student.

Drawing, Painting, & Sculpting Horses distills the process of horse-focused art into learnable steps. Heads, legs, tails, shading, etc. are all covered separately with space for practice and tips given on each. Practice is even done on the anatomically correct horse - drawing bones and muscles. Many helpful tips are given on art materials and on how to simplify some of the exercises for younger artists. Encouragement and biblical references are frequent throughout the book. As stated in the name, tips and lessons are not merely on how to draw horses, but also how to shade, paint, and sculpt horses.

Dragons, Dinosaurs, Knights, and Castles begins with a brief historical lesson on the dinosaur and the dragon. This book smoothly transitions to art lessons with strategically placed historical tidbits. Art techniques your child will learn include sculpting three-dimensional dinosaurs, basic shape and line drawings, shading, shadowing and textures, grid drawing, motions, color wheel, and perspective. 

"A" is for apple. "B" is for ball. "C" is for cat. Learn to draw each item, and a little something about art principles as you do: shading in "A", patterns in "B", and foreground/background in "C". Rich and Sharon present "The ABC's of Art" with joy and enthusiasm. The heart of the book contains 26 lessons, corresponding to the 26 letters of the alphabet, with plenty to consider and do on every page. Each lesson contains one or more art principles or definitions, one or more art activities, and information or practice on specific art techniques. Learning and retaining is better with hands-on projects. Art topics include color wheel, shapes, lines, texture, perspective, balance, and more.

The book begins with a wonderful section on using art supplies (finally, someone has taken the time to explain those pencil grades!). There are lots of "how-to's" and incredible tips for drawing with 7 full pages of exercises in drawing from basic shapes. Also included are goodies like "recipes" for different modeling compounds, including edible clay, and brief overviews of the major art styles at the end of the lessons. Fun for all, this is an art course you can definitely use with all of your children at once.

Suggested art supplies include: pencils, drawing paper, charcoal, oil pastels, tempera paints, water colors, and chalk pastels. Book: 50 pgs, 8.5x11" pb. CD: contains PDF of book. ~ Emily