Picture study or art appreciation is important when it comes to stockpiling our children with beautiful things to think about. Charlotte says: "We cannot measure the influence that one artist or another has on the child’s sense of beauty, upon his power of seeing, as in a picture, the common sight of life.."

Our children live in a world where they are bombarded with hi-tech advertisings and unsavory and immodest pictures all the time. How much better is it to give them beautiful pictures on which to ponder?

We started with the impressionists when our chidlren were young as we found their pictures readily on the walls of most doctor’s rooms and offices. The books that we used I recommend on my art appreciation book review page.

Later I choose a theme to work through for example - children, beautiful ladies, animals, scenery...I would choose 4 – 6. At other times for our art appreciation I chose an artist linked to our current history study for example when we studied the Renaissance period we looked at Da Vinci and Michelangelo.

The method of the lesson will vary from informal to more structured according to the ages of the children.

Charlotte Mason in her Original Homeschooling Series give some guidelines on how to conduct a lesson. I have adapted it here to show how we have done on occasion.

It is suggested to follow the following format:
(I have used an example from a lesson we did on Monet)

Introduce the child to the artist first by means of a peculiarity i.e. Monet loved flowers and gardens and he even had a pond and a bridge built in his garden so he could paint a greater variety. Because he loved them so he was able to paint them beautifully.

Give them the picture of one of his paintings either the water lilies or bridge and ask them to find out for themselves as much as they can about the picture by looking at it. This time should be quiet and the child’s looking uninterrupted.

After 3 or 4 minutes take the picture away and ask the child to retell as much of the picture as they can remember. What time of day was it? What was in the background/foreground? Ask them what he was saying in his thoughts as he was painting.

Allow the children to draw or paint in the medium that the artist used, or make a sketch of the main lines. Older children could be asked to give a written narration of the picture.

It is not very often that we have the chance to walk through galleries and study paintings but this should be something to do at least twice a year.

Penny Gardener who wrote A Charlotte Mason Study Guide, has a wonderful website where she describes how her family enjoyed making an art appreciation notebook. We have decided to do one this year and it is a project in progress.

We covered a normal A4 lined exercise book and pasted a picture of one of our artists on the front. I pasted our mission statement on the inside cover which had our desired years study on it.

Then as we have studied an artist we have added a short biography and a picture of him if available. Each picture that we have studied I have printed out from the website and put it in with the children’s narrations underneath.

We plan to keep adding to this and make it a family project over our homeschool journey.

Other pages on this site that you may be interested in are:

Organize your art cupboard
Art and craft ideas
Homeschool Art Programs
Music Appreciation Book Reviews
Poetry Book Reviews
Nature Study Book Reviews

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