Homeschool Art Resources to Inspire

These are our favourite home school art resources designed to inspire you with a ton of home school ideas and help you teach home school art in your family.

These art resources, books, homeschool art curriculum, and read-alouds have either been used personally by our family (see Ways to Teach Art ), what we are hoping to use or what has been highly recommended.

The Best Homeschool Art Resources and Curriculum

Homeschool Art Resources to help you teach your children: 

Living Books to teach Art History in your homeschool


The absolutely best way to study art history is to read historical fiction and living books! Combine art with the historical time period you are studying.

My all time favourite book for that is "Art in Story." This is for younger children.

The author, Saccardi, shares information on the history of art during each time period and adds suggestions for art projects using the methods or a similar style of the artist being studied.

We have used this book alongside our homeschool history curriculum, so we have read the particular artist of the time period.  It is simple to use and suggests paintings and art work which you can easily look up in other books or the internet.

We often used suggestions from this book for ideas to copy the great artists.

Truly one of my favourite books!

Art pictures - great homeschool art resource to study art history

A great way to develop your homeschool art curriculum and promote the love of art in your homeschool, is to have art books in the home.  You can find plenty of these at second hand bookshops - and the more the merrier. It's great if you can find large books with art prints so you can view, discuss and use them as a resource to try to copy the artist.

Laurence Anholt's series of famous artists delights children with its wonderful drawings, lovely stories, and art history. It is a wonderful way to introduce children to the great artists.

The Richard Muhlberger of, "What makes a ..." Series is great for an older audience - grades 5-9.  The books feature 12 important paintings and each book helps the children to understand the qualities that make one artist's work different from another. The details in the books help with analysis of composition, line, color, and subject matter, and information about the world in which the artist worked.

Another excellent resource to help children study the artists and the work through art history chronologically is The Annotated Mona Lisa. 

Artistic Pursuits - homeschool art curriculum

On my Artistic Pursuits page, I have described what I like about these books and the homeschool art curriculum. I will not repeat myself here, but encourage you to have a look for yourself to see if it will suits your children, their ages and will be appropriate to the way you want to teach art. It teaches the elements of art and also helps you to copy the styles of different artists in different time periods.

Barry Stebbing - homeschool art curriculum

I have used both "I can do all Things" and "Feed my Sheep" Art homeschooling resources from Barry Stebbing and I have found them to be excellent. My children sometimes draw while I am reading aloud and these have been easy to use - good instructions and important art techniques are covered. I have not used the DVDs, but I can see that these would really add to an art curriculum.

Although I haven't used it, God and the History of Art sounds very interesting and appealing - it is a 5 year curriculum!

Those who have used it love it for these reasons:

  • It is easy to use
  • Little teacher preparation
  • Can be used as a supplement to the history being studied.
  • Solid art curriculum from a Christian perspective.

Atelier Art Curriculum

This Atelier Art Curriculum looks amazing and I have heard fantastic reviews about it.

Have you used this? let me know!

 Atelier Art Curriculum Level 1 Developed to nurture success within a homeschool environment, the Atelier program is user-friendly, process-oriented, and encourages a right-brain, creative approach to teaching.

Each Atelier Art Curriculum Kit arrives in a box that includes three DVDs, a three-ring-binder with three module lesson plans, and the Atelier Parents' and Teachers' Manual, which provides a scope & sequence, lesson objectives, materials-needed list, and teaching suggestions/helps that cover the entire program. This kit provides lessons for a full year.




Online Homeschool Art Courses and Classes

I am very impressed with the homeschool art courses created and used by many homeschool families. SchoolHouseTeachers.com provides courses written by a variety of authors - delivered as online courses, with text and video.

They have a huge variety of  online homeschool art classes for children in different age groups and cover Art techniques, Use of Colour, Outdoor Art Projects for younger children as well as Art History Courses. 

They often advertise a special price in which you can begin a subscription for a month at a very cheap rate - just to see if you like it. It's not a bad idea especially if you have a few children who could all benefit from the range of courses available. In my opinion, using SchoolhouseTeachers is an economical approach to having a ton of homeschool courses at your fingertips. Learn more about SchoolhouseTeacher prices.

More homeschool art resources and supplies

Apart from the great books to read aloud and the art curriculum which helps to keep you on track, you need a bunch of great homeschooling resources to build up your art supplies cupboard.

These do not need to be expensive. I would suggest you get reasonable quality materials to begin with so that you will encourage your children to use it a lot. If everything you have is expensive, you will tend to keep it on the shelf and only take it out at special times.

What you really need is a bunch of paper, pencils, markers, large containers of paint which are all accessible. As the children mature in their art skills, you can be more particular about what you will purchase.

Artist quality pencils (such as the Derwent watercolour pencils), paint, pastels, oil pastels do vary and they are more costly.

So, when your children are ready and can handle the materials with care, you can spend a little more. I would buy them for birthday gifts. One year I remember buying a large set of watercolour pencils as a Christmas gift for the whole family.

You will also need odds and ends.  Homeschooling resources such as: Glue, adhesive tape, rulers, erasers.

You'll need to have a good supply of toilet rolls, old cereal boxes, cardboard and so on. Before you throw something away, ask yourself - could this be made into a sculpture? Yes - it's a messy time, but so worthwhile!

And lastly, you'll need something to store it in. Plastic crates or a set of drawers is fine. Whatever makes sense in your home with the space you have.

Free art curriculum and art lesson plan ideas

The National Gallery of Art Kids (NGA Kids) has a huge amount of interactive online learning activities to help children explore art.

Hodgepodge has 100+ free art lessons featuring chalk pastels and acrylics. Great site!

The Virtual Instructor has a huge amount of video art lessons (some free) - from drawing to painting. The owner of the site is a highschool art teacher and provides free middle school and high school art lesson plans.


Where to from here?

How to teach homeschool art

With all this treasure of lovely art resources and supplies - you can explore: