Fun Art Lessons For Kids From ArtAchieve – Review

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Do your children love art?  I know that mine do and I really think all children enjoy drawing and creating when it’s kept fun.  Our family homeschools year round but we like to take things slower in the summertime.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this product for review, all opinions are 100% my own. This post may contain affiliate links my full disclosure can be read here.

Our summers can be very hot and humid but at the same time, they are pretty short! So I save a lot of our outdoor nature study for the summer mornings and evenings when it’s cooler and then we enjoy indoor activities during the afternoon when it’s just to hot to be outside. One of our favourite afternoon activities that we’ve been working on lately is the Entire Level 1 art lessons from ArtAchieve.

ArtAchieve was created by John Hofland a homeschooling father who was an art and language arts teacher in middle school.  How many times have I said that I just LOVE curriculum and classes developed by other homeschooling parents?  They are always so much fun and really work for our family.

ArtAchieve offers 5 levels of art classes for children, each a little more difficult than the previous one.

We have been working on the level 1 art class and loving it!

The first lesson is split into 3 parts.  Here John teaches children how to relax when they are drawing and how to break down pictures into simple lines.  You will practice tracing straight, curved and angled lines and he provides worksheets in 3 levels of difficulty.

After practicing the lines children learn how to shade objects that have corners and round objects.

We enjoyed these exercises but the real fun starts when children begin to learn to draw animals.

Lesson 2 is The Czech Cat where children learn how to draw this adorable cat inspired by a charm bracelet from a Czech Republic jewelry store.

John encourages children and adults to, that anyone can learn how to draw more than just a stick figure.

You can use ArtAchieve lessons just for art but included with each art lesson are suggestions and helpful links to turn it into a full unit study!

In your Czech Cat lesson, you can also learn about the Czech Republic, enjoy stories, poems and music from the Czech Republic.  Learn about cats with a fun trivia page and John gives ideas for writing stories and poems about cats.

See what I mean?  You could easily use these ideas and links to do a short unit study for children.

Each art lesson provides you with a warm up exercise and drawing template in PDF format that you can download and print.  The actual drawing lessons are shown step by step in 2 formats.

Children have the option of using a PowerPoint slide show.  If you use this option you will need to read the text yourself and follow along with the drawings.

Each lesson is also available in video format and John walks your step by step through the warm up exercise and drawing the lesson.

I LOVE that both options are included this makes ArtAchieve lessons so friendly for children with different learning styles and ages.

Level 1 includes drawing projects for

• The Czech Cat

• The Hungarian Insects

• The Haitian Gecko

• The Dragonfly From Ecuador

• The Chinese Dragon

• The Owl From Bali

• The Kitenge Tree Wall Hanging From Tanzania

• The Plate From Nepal

• Four Suns With Four Faces

• The Sheep From Wales

All of my children have been using this art program and really enjoying it.  As a busy mother, I’m loving how simple it is to use.

A supply list is available so you can make sure to have what you need on hand before each lesson.  I find the materials needed are simple and easy to find locally, many we already had on hand.

Before starting the art lesson I would print out the warm up exercise and pattern sheets for each child who is doing this lesson.  Then simply set our laptop up on the table and let them play the step by step video  lesson.

The video lessons work really well for us because my children are very visual learners.  They can watch John demonstrate how the drawing is done step by step and follow along pausing the video when needed.

I really love that John encourages children to draw for themselves and not for other people.  He tells them right up front that they will not always be happy with how their drawing is turning out and not to give up.  Keep going because often after just a few more lines it starts to work much better.

So far our children’s favourite lesson is the Hungarian Bugs and I can’t blame them for that this is such a cute drawing project!

Would you like to try the art lessons? ArtAchieve offers the first 2 lessons of Level 1 for free!