ARTistic Pursuits Review

      Art is something that is very important to me. I am a creative person and I always have some (read 20) crafty projects going on in my house. So as a homeschool mom I love teaching art to my children. My eldest son in particular (he's 9) loves to draw and has and entire drawer filled with "how to draw" books. A while back I decided to look online and find a curriculum that might help me introduce different artistic mediums and more knowledge of Visual arts to my children and I ran across the ARTistic pursuits website. I fell in love with their art curriculum, but it wasn't at a time where I could add anything to the course of study we were already doing. Imagine how excited I was when I got the opportunity to review their first book Early Elementary K-3 Book one: An Introduction to the Visual Arts as part of the Review crew!

     ARTistic Pursuits' book one is broken up into three sections: What Artists Do, What Artists See, and Where We Find Art. There are a total of 36 lessons separated into these three sections, so easily enough to last you through a school year. Each lesson has a section to read and learn about artist and art and then a project for you to do with your children. There is list a supplies to have on hand at the beginning of the book and then what you'll need for each project at the beginning of each lesson.

    
     The lessons give your children a chance to think like an artist, and then translate those thoughts into their own artwork. There is also many full color prints of famous artwork through out the book that gives your children the opportunity to study artwork and see what emotions, subjects and mediums different arts have used in the past.

     We have really been enjoying working on this curriculum together. Because it is geared for Kindergarten through Third grade (it says ages 5 and up) my 9, 7, and 4 year old all were eager to participate (so was the baby, but we mostly just let him color with crayons in the highchair as we talked). My 7 and 9 year olds were most fully able to understand all the subject matter, while the 4 year old enjoyed more participating in the art project portion of the lesson. For our family, art is never a subject that is boring or difficult to get my children to participate in, they were all eager for every new lesson and several times wished they could do another art project rather than work on reading, math or spelling.



     ARTistic Pursuits Early Elementary K-3 Book one: An Introduction to the Visual Arts is $47.95. I hope we'll be able to purchase the other books in the curriculum as well, I think ARTistic Pursuits will give your children a well-rounded study of art throughout their homeschool career. Click on the link below if you want to hear what other Crew members had to say about some of the other curriculum levels that ARTistic pursuits offers.



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Memoria Press Review

     I have recently had the opportunity to review a cursive writing curriculum from Memoria Press called New American Cursive:Penmanship Program Workbook 1. Cursive writing is not often taught in our school systems today and I was eager to teach my own homeschooled children. Though Memoria Press includes this soft-covered, spiral-bound workbook with their first grade classical curriculum, I decided it would be the best fit for my third grader.

     New American Cursive is a workbook with fun interactive lessons that are engaging to young children. Some of the letters are somewhat simplified from classic cursive writing, making them easier to write. As they learn each new upper and lower case cursive letter, there is a space for their own unique artwork. My son used this are to draw pictures of the cursive letters going on extraordinary adventures. It worked out to be a great way to capture his interest and provided him with extra practice on his letters!

     I think this workbook will be a great introduction to cursive for any young child K-3 depending on the child. My third grader has some fine-motor delays/ dyslexic-tendencies and handwriting has always been an area of struggle for him. I know that often children who do struggle with printing can improve when taught cursive. I hope this is the case for him, he did really enjoy using the workbook and mommy enjoyed that it was simple for him to understand what was required of him so he could do the work independently. I also really like the format of this book. the spiral binding is at the top of the book making it equally effective for left and right handed children. This is an aspect often overlooked by publishers and so I really appreciate the forethought that went into New American Cursive.


     There is a teaching guide at the beginning of the book which gives several suggestions on how to make this program successful for your children. It also talks about why cursive is important for your children. I didn't know that cursive can improve the neural pathways between the left and right side of the brain! I'll be eager to see how this benefit my strongly left-brained child. The work samples of some of the 6 and 7 year olds that did this program are very impressive, however I know that not all children will be capable of such excellent penmanship so early on and I am happy with the age we are starting at as I feel it's perfect for our situation.

     New American Cursive is $22.95, there are several pages you can look at and try out on their website if you would like to see the format they use. There are also additional levels that Memoria Press offers for more advanced cursive practice.

     If you would like more information, please go check out Memoria Press' website and the other reviews by Review Crew members (click the link below). Memoria Press also offers lots of other classical curriculum materials on their website, so be sure to check them out as well.





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