Running With Spears

Oh my goodness, you guys,  I’m so excited to share my review of a super awesome art program  – ArtAchieve! My girls have been working through the Entire Level I art classes, and LOVING them! 😀

What it is:

ArtAchieve offers five levels of art classes. Each of the 11 lessons in Level I have PowerPoint and  video versions to choose from (except the very first introduction lesson about simple lines, which just has a PowerPoint option). Each lesson shares the inspiration for the product, goals for the lesson, a warm up activity that uses an included printable page, rules for drawing (such as “There is no right or wrong way to draw. One drawing is not better than another. It’s just different — because the people who are drawing are different.” ), step-by-step detailed drawing instruction, direction for coloring in the drawing with whichever medium the lesson is featuring, and reflection questions.

The lesson pages inform you what supplies are required and approximately how much time the lesson requires to complete – broken down into time to draw and time to color, in case you want to spread the project out over multiple days. The lesson pages also include suggestions for cross-curricular connections for subjects such as geography, social studies, art (famous artists, etc) literature, music, writing, architecture, science and more. These sections often include links to make including these subjects effortless on your part!

In Level I, all but four of the lessons can  be completed with just paper, a black marker (though we actually just used a pen),  markers, and a paper plate for one lesson. A couple of these seven also include tips for using paint pens, one has two separate lessons available – one for markers and one for acrylic paints, and one has instruction for using oil pastels and watercolors but mentions that younger kids may want to just use markers. For the other four lessons you’ll need acrylic paints and paintbrushes, oil pastels, watercolors, and a charcoal white pencil. (Though technically I suppose you could choose to color them all in with just markers if you wanted.)

How we’ve been using it:

We tried both the video and PowerPoint lessons. The videos had more flavor,  if you will. You get to see the kindly grandfather-ish man do each of the steps with you, and he adds smidgens of additional information that aren’t in the PowerPoint. Nothing crucial, but nice to have nonetheless. Because of that, we ended up mostly using just the videos for the first time through a lesson, and then Artist used the PowerPoint lessons to go back through and re-do them numerous times in order to make each of her final products slightly different. The videos clearly presented the entire lesson to the extent that I could hand my girls the supplies, log them in to the lesson, and then walk away. #coffeebreakforme 😉

What we think:

ArtAchieve is a huge hit! We planned to do art lessons once a week, but my girls beg to do them much more often than that.

I LOVE that someone else  is teaching art to my girls!

Honestly, art is the one subject that I’ve felt like my girls are missing out on because they don’t go to public school with a real art teacher. I’ve bought numerous art books that we’ve had varying measures of success with, but I’ve always felt fumbly and blech when I try to teach from them. Plus it’s super difficult for me to try to teach something like art with a toddler and baby in tow.

These videos made the teaching aspect a non-issue. And they’re effective as well. Artist has been able to create some very lovely works (in my opinion), and definitely showed improvement over projects she’d been able to create on her own. And she LOVES doing the lessons again and again!

I also really  love the emphasis that is placed on every work of art being unique and not comparing your picture to anyone else’s because Boo is younger than Artist so her skill just isn’t quite on the same level. Plus she  really loves to put her own twist on things, like making her dragon breathe fire rather than having a tongue.

In the past the two of them have gotten into arguments about whose picture was better, but the rules of drawing that are reiterated in each lesson have really put the kibosh on that.

With ArtAchieve we’ve also had much greater success with the girls feeling proud of the artwork they make! 

I know that’s due, in part, to the fact that they’re actually being better equipped to successfully create the picture they’re attempting to make.

I mean, don’t get me wrong – the videos are rather unlikely to miraculously create highly skilled artists out of kids whose current skill level = less impressive than my two year old’s ability to cut every piece of paper she sees into tiny scraps and scatter them everywhere. 😉

But I’ve definitely seen improvement in the final products my girls have created.

That said, I think the girls’ pride in their artwork is also partially due to the atmosphere of the lessons. The rules that are presented each lesson include wisdom like, “It’s okay not to like everything you draw. Even famous artists do not like everything they create.” And, “Remember to draw for yourself, not for your teacher or your classmates.” Plus the teacher in the videos emphasizes that he is going to do things a certain way but you are free to make some different choices, and the language he uses always feels very approachable and non-judgmental.

I also like the fact that these lessons don’t require a lot of expensive supplies the way some art lessons do. 

The lessons themselves aren’t too pricey either, which is quite fortunate since I’m pretty sure Artist will beg me relentlessly for the Level II lessons as soon as she finishes Level I…and I’ll gladly get them for her because I’m so relieved to finally have the means to provide her with quality art instruction! 😀

We honestly couldn’t be happier with ArtAchieve! If you’re interested in the lessons, go check out the free lessons to get a taste for what they’re like, and let me know if you have any questions!

Also, be sure to check out the other Schoolhouse Review Crew reviews of ArtAchieve, including reviews of Levels II and III!

You guys, I’m so excited to get to share a  this is one of the best things ever  product with you!

We  received a Lifetime Membership to NotebookingPages.com  to review, and let me tell you, it is AWESOME!

For a long time I’ve been a huge fan of delight directed homeschooling, but sometimes it’s hard to know how  to actually make that work. My kids tend to get excited about something for a time and read, write, and do projects related to it. But I’m super disorganized so we didn’t really have a system in place to keep track of their work or prompt additional research or anything, so soon they’d lose interest and we wouldn’t even have anything to show for the work they’d done.

Enter: NotebookingPages.com!

My lifetime membership grants me access to 1000s of printable pages on practically every topic under the sun – and even some about the sun. 😉 I mean seriously they have everything from A-Z animals for littles, to famous composers, and Latin and Greek word studies, as well as a plethora of beautiful copywork pages! They even have pages for pretty much every holiday, including  free  Independence Day (USA) Notebooking Pages that you can try if you’re interested!

And if we ever come up against a topic we want to work on that they don’t have specific pages for, we can use still use their basic pages with various fun borders, pictures and banners, with lines for writing plus empty boxes for whatever we want to add!

Probably my favorite thing about NotebookingPages.com, though, is that it’s actually so much more than just printables…it’s a tool to help my kids organize the research they’re interested in doing and dive deeper, too.

For example, the first topic my 9 year old, Artist, wanted me to make a notebook about was wild cats. She’s done lots of research about various wild cats in the past. She loves watching shows about them, and has even written some short-stories featuring wild cats as the main characters. But we’ve never actually though about the work she was doing as an official part of her education, or held onto anything in any sort of meaningful way.

So, per her request, I printed out the pages on leopards. She loved carefully coloring the cover page, but she didn’t stop there. Next she had a page prompting her to research and write down the scientific classification, life span, average size, diet, habitat, and so on. Then she had a bunch of pages with pictures to color in, blank boxes to make her own sketches, and plenty of space to write whatever she wanted.

She had an awesome time collecting data about lots of different wild cats for her notebook. She even created her own word scramble and she took great care to make sure every page was something she was proud to display, adding special touches like leopard print washi tape.

For Boo, who is in kindergarten, there are alphabet copywork pages that look helpful, but we haven’t actually gotten around to them yet because she’s been so excited about pursuing other topics. She first wanted to make a book about her favorite animals. She can’t write yet, so we had to get a bit more creative. She wanted to start with penguins, so she watched a video about penguins while she colored the cover page and then she informed me that penguins eat fish, so we printed out a fish for her to cut out and tape in a blank square on one of the penguin pages. We also printed out a world map so she could color in where they live, and a map of just Antarctica.

The best part is how much FUN they both have when they’re notebooking. We took a couple days off school, but they still begged me to print out notebooking pages for them! I love  their enthusiasm! I also love the way the pages strike a really awesome balance between prompting them to find out specific information about their chosen topic and giving them space to really make it their own and include whatever they  want in their notebook.

I suggested we spend a little time on some backyard science and my girls had an awesome time working together to create backyard themed notebooks. Boo decided on a hummingbird for her cover page, and Artist used a dandelion. They used binoculars to bird watch, and a little portable microscope to look at the details of grass and flowers. We printed out pages about the parts of a flower, and they even wanted to include some relevant Bible verse cards.

When I asked for their thoughts about NotebookingPages.com for my review, they raved about how much they love it and wanted to make sure we weren’t going to stop using it just because the review period was over. They literally squealed with delight when I assured them that I don’t plan to ever stop using the pages!

There’s a sampler of over 600 free pages you guys can try, no strings attached! Check them out if you’re interested, and let me know if you have any questions! 🙂

You should also hop over to the Schoolhouse Review Crew link up and check out how other members of the crew are taking advantage of their NotebookingPages.com memberships, and what they think about the product!

*P.S.  This post contains affiliate links, which means that I will get a commission if you decide to purchase anything. I only signed up for the affiliate program after discovering how much my girls and I love NotebookingPages.com. It’s a product I’m excited to recommend to family and friends, which includes and you guys, too, of course!