One of the reasons that I’ve chosen to use Unit Studies for History and Science at this point in our educational adventure is that it forces me to incorporate art projects into the children’s regular schooling. Without that imposed inclusion of art I would probably do very little beyond proving them with coloring books and crayons. Cute projects aren’t something I find myself to be good at, and the difficulty of planning something that everyone can do without the mess taking over the house can be somewhat daunting. Then too we have a small house and art projects tend to be much beloved of their creators; which is good but creates a problem or storage and/or display.
Students of this age need visuals to help them remember what they are learning, so I try hard to incorporate them into their unit studies. A few weeks ago I received a discount offer from a bookseller and although I usually just delete those emails, this time I decided to click through their site on the off-chance that they would have something I wanted.
I was very pleased to find this series was heavily discounted and ordered the two books that I thought would fit well with what we were doing.
This one covers the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Each book contains several carefully drawn, step by step lessons appropriate to the subject. Since we are just finishing up Marco Polo, I decided to have the children each draw a pagoda in their log books.
They began by drawing guidelines then added more and more detail.
The final step in each lesson is coloring and shading
These books are written for ages 8 and up, so the children needed some help but I think with time they will learn to follow the steps themselves and learn quite a bit about drawing along the way.