How I’m Teaching Art This Year With Creating a Masterpiece

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Art is one of those subjects that can easily get pushed to the backburner in many homeschools. Teaching art might feel overwhelming if you don’t have a creative bone in your body, and for us mamas who have a hard time getting messy, you might have anxiety just thinking about containing all of the art supplies (it’s ok – you’re not alone!).

I especially struggled because I knew my kids loved art, but I didn’t know exactly how to go about teaching art class. That simply led me to ignore being intentional about helping my kids learn these important skills. Reading and math, that’s what was important, right?

Well, my fate was sealed when I was planning out our new homeschool year. I asked my kids what they wished we did more of in our homeschool (you can see where this is going).

Yep – all three gave a resounding answer of “art!”.

So, we headed into our annual homeschool convention on a mission to find the perfect visual arts curriculum for us, because I knew there was no way I was going to attempt teaching art without one.

My husband and I narrowed down a few options, and eventually settled on Creating a Masterpiece, which has been an incredible addition to our homeschool this year (messes and all).

Homeschool Art for All Ages

Creating a Masterpiece is an award-winning homeschool fine arts program that can be used for any age groups, grade levels, or experience levels. Their tagline reads, “Online Art Lessons for Ages 5 through 105+”. I love this, and it really embodies how Sharon Hofer (the teacher behind the curriculum) approaches teaching art.

Sharon has had years of experience in art education. She is calm and encouraging, with an effective teaching style, which creates a nice learning environment. Sharon believes that anyone can be an artist, and that all of our unique kids will produce their own unique art. I really appreciate how she stresses mastery over perfection, teaching art students to value the process of art and their own hard work and individual style.

You can choose from three art programs when you sign up. Each has a slightly different focus, so you can choose the best fit for you and your kids.

Art Essentials

This is the program we chose to begin with. It offers over 60 projects spanning 6 levels (beginner through level 5), and teaches kids to work with a variety of art media and skills.

In this art education program, your kids will complete art activities using art media like acrylic, batik, colored pencil, glass mosaic, ink, oil pastel, sculpture, watercolor, and more. They’ll also learn many elements of art such as color theory, composition, contrast, highlights, perspective, symmetry, and shading.

Drawing Program

A pencil and a sketchpad are all you need to get started with the drawing program! This program also offers 8 different levels; as your kids progress through the course, they will not only improve their drawing, but gain skills they can transfer to other fine art media.

Skills your kids will work on include symmetry, center of interest, two- and three-point perspective, shape, proportion, and more.

Art History

If your kids love history, this program will help it come to life! It covers art techniques used by famous artists from the past, so instead of just reading about them, your child will get a chance to re-create their work of art and begin building a strong background in art history knowledge.

There are three levels in this course that cover different styles of art, a historically-themed project, and a capstone art project. Students work with faux metal and stained glass, glass, oils, and more.

Teaching Art Made Easy

I’ll show you just how easy teaching art in your homeschool can be with Creating a Masterpiece.

For starters, you have complete flexibility over how often you want to do an art lesson. You might like to have a set day (or couple of days) set aside to include art, or you might enjoy it more if you can turn on a lesson whenever your kids would like to work on a project. Creating a Masterpiece is self-paced, so it can fit in nicely with any homeschooling style or schedule.

Once you pick a project, you’ll see an overview page with your supply list, a link to purchase the supplies, and your project lessons.

In our homeschool, we do art classes every Friday morning, and we do one lesson at a time. Most projects have about 3-4 lessons, so for example, the project in the screenshot above would take our family 3 weeks to complete.

Each lesson is then broken down into manageable chunks, typically just a few minutes long each. Sharon gives step-by-step, detailed instructions through the project, as well as technique tips and encouragement.

Be prepared to hit the pause button often, especially if you have younger children, or your kids are new to some of these art concepts!

Also on each lesson page is a list of supplies used in that particular lesson, helpful tips, and even samples of other students’ creative work, so your kids can be inspired.

I love that with this being a self-paced course, families have a lot of flexibility when it comes to teaching art. You may have kids that want to do a lesson a day, and you totally can! Or, if you prefer to move a bit slower (like us) and do one per week, you’ll still be able to get through about 6-9 projects during the school year if you work consistently.

Our (Beginner) Projects

So far we have completed 3 projects with Creating a Masterpiece. We were complete beginners when we started, and I have been really impressed not only by the works of art my kids have created, but seeing their joy and confidence grow when they step back and appreciate something beautiful they made!

My kids took the reigns and picked out some pieces they liked from Art Essentials Beginner 1 level. Looking back, I probably should have encouraged them to choose something from the Beginners section since they were completely new to this, but I don’t think they did too shabby!

Our first project was painting in acrylic. The second taught them how to use oil pastels (brand new to us!), and the third project they chose was a turtle sculpture – that was so much fun!

Even my Pre-K-er gets in on the action…but, judging by his painting, I’m not sure they should lower the age limit to 3 just yet (he loves it just as much as the big kids, though!).

My kids have really enjoyed the new skills and techniques they are learning through their lessons!

What You’ll Need for Teaching Art

You do have a little extra expense with this program in that you need to buy supplies per lesson. Some of the course materials you might have on hand, but if not, you’ll need to budget for them.

Each lesson has a supply list, with a link to purchase everything you need. They recommend Blick.com for supplies, which I have used and loved. I think it ends up being cheaper than Amazon many times, as long as your purchase qualifies you for free shipping. In that case, it might make sense to map out lesson plans for the year and stock up on your supplies.

If you have older kids, planning out the art supply shopping list would be a great task to assign to them.

If the idea of purchasing a lot of extra supplies is a drawback, you may consider the Drawing Program. The only supplies you need are drawing paper, pencils, and charcoal.

You’ll be watching your lessons from a screen, so you do want to consider making sure you have a spot where your kids could easily see your computer screen, or a TV if you have an HDMI cable or the option to cast.

I also recommend grabbing an easel (I purchased these from Amazon and they’ve worked out well!), and making sure you have a trusty old tablecloth to use to cover your surface you’ll be working on in your art room or kitchen.

Other Perks to the Art Curriculum

When you purchase a subscription to Creating a Masterpiece, anyone in the family can use it. One price covers all of your kids, so this is a nice perk for large families especially.

You can choose to pay monthly, or receive a discount if you pay yearly.

One thing I learned at our convention is that if you complete 6 projects within the year, you’ll receive $50 off your next year’s subscription! So make sure you take pictures to submit to the company, this is a great offer if you want to continue teaching art in your homeschool.

Finally, I think one of the biggest perks is having beautiful, quality artwork now starting to fill up our homeschool room wall. You’ll also have gifts ready to be created for the grandparents, who love receiving artwork from the kids!

Creating a Masterpiece in Your Homeschool

If you’ve ever wished you could bring art teachers into your homeschool, l definitely recommend you give Creating a Masterpiece a try. The program has been such a fun way for my kids to learn some basic artistic skills I wouldn’t have taught them on my own, and they’ve gained so much confidence in their artistic abilities in a short time.

And even I have more confidence that I can give my kids a creative environment in our home from which they can grow their art skills as they want.

I hope this review has given you some helpful insight as to whether or not it would be a good fit for your homeschool arts education curriculum.

If you want to give it a try before committing, and see what it’s really like, you can access a FREE a beginner-level project here. All you need to do is sign up, and make sure you have some soft pastels on hand – you’re ready to create a masterpiece!

I’d love to hear from you in the comments: have you tried Creating a Masterpiece? What have been your favorite ways to incorporate teaching art in your homeschool? Let me know!

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