What are you using for your homeschool high school art credit?  Does art often get pushed aside in your homeschool even when you know it will enrich your day?  Do you often wish there was a better solution that integrated with your history unit studies, and that the whole family could use? Read guest writer, Stephanie Reeves’ review of Take Time for Art for High School.

The Need for a Homeschool High School Art Credit

Finding a homeschool high school art credit can be a challenge!  Our family has homeschooled for the past fourteen years, and as a part of our fine arts curriculum, we have incorporated music, dance, and theater. I began to notice, however, that as our children grew older, their time spent in creative pursuits diminished. Despite the relative freedom that homeschooling gave us, we became almost completely consumed with academics and perhaps one or two chosen extracurricular activities. Time just seemed to evaporate during the high school years! We needed a homeschool high school art credit and a bit more creativity in our days.

One rite of passage in the homeschooling journey is preparing the high school transcript. Students are expected to complete one full credit of fine arts studies before they graduate. Enter Take Time for Art! My 17- and 15-year-old completed both the Ancient Egypt and Ancient Rome units. Each unit counts as 15 hours of high school credit, so we now have a total of .5 credits of fine arts.  With TakeTime for Art, I can count this as one semester of Visual Art or Art I on each of their transcripts.

My Impressions

I would like to share my impressions of Take Time for Art as a homeschool high school art credit as well as a necessary creative outlet for older students. First of all, the Take Time for Art program is all-inclusive, with instruction in technique as well as wonderfully intriguing history lessons which we found in the video lectures. The art supplies are high-quality and definitely helped my students to feel that they were doing real studio art at an advanced level.

There are simple versions and more complicated versions to challenge most ages and stages from upper elementary to high school. I found that my high school students were able to progress very independently through the projects and were appropriately challenged by them. In addition to working independently, they were able to self-pace. For high school students, it’s wonderful to have the option to work on a project any time of day (or night) and also work around other academic, sports, or work commitments.

As my high school students began to focus on their art, they became more relaxed and thoughtful. Cell phones were set aside in favor of paintbrushes and clay! Amidst a lot of stimulation, data, and images of what society holds up as beautiful, it was a healthy experience for my students to consider their own ideas of beauty and express them with art materials.

Favorite Projects

The two projects in the Ancient Rome unit that utilized clay, the Roman arch and the bust, were favorites with my students for different reasons. The one who loves science, especially physics, spent a lot of time crafting her clay bricks with precision. After mastering the arch, she enjoyed building different structures and testing their relative strengths. Learning about Roman architecture on the video segment, she commented that “the Romans were way ahead of the game!” Another student is a lover of theater, costuming, and photography. Her Roman bust had an elaborate hairstyle and some seriously enviable bone structure. Although this Roman woman is undoubtedly beautiful, she does not resemble the pretty girls of today’s Instagram feeds. She is unique, strong, resilient, and proud.

Another project which drew my students in for long periods of relaxing creativity was the tile mosaic. Because the arrangement of tiles can be completely planned before any one piece is secured in place, they were able to spend as long as they wanted looking at their art, thinking about it, and re-working the tile pieces until the desired image appeared. They also decided to pool their tiles in order to have a greater color selection available. I enjoyed watching their collaboration and cooperation!

A Good Fit

Take Time for Art was a great fit for our homeschool because of its inherent flexibility and creative freedom. While my students learned particular art techniques, they were always encouraged, “Make the project your own!” Fulfilling a needed high school fine art credit, Take Time for Art was an instructive and rewarding option.

Guest writer, Stephanie Reeves, is a wife, mother of five children, and a homeschooling mom of 14 years.  She reviewed Take Time for Art’s Ancient Rome with her two high school daughters.