Art field trips involve visiting places such as galleries or museums, art shows or art schools. Visit a college's art department, an artist's studio or a business such as an architect's or designer's office. Living history museums offer hands-on experiences such as wood carving, blacksmithing or weaving. You can go as a family or organize a co-op field trip for multiple families. Watch for suitable opportunities in your local newspapers.
Homeschoolers can participate in art appreciation activities that can help them learn about different forms of art and their significance. An easy way to incorporate art appreciation into a homeschool curriculum is to collect coffee table art books, which can be kept within easy reach of little hands. Parents and children can also read aloud stories about famous artists, adding each one to a timeline that will eventually show the world's finest artists during each period of history.
Many homeschool families enjoy doing picture study as recommended by revered British educator Charlotte Mason. Her approach is simple to incorporate into your day and inexpensive. In Volume 1 of her original writings, "Home Education," she gives step-by-step instructions on how to do picture study with homeschool students.
Homeschoolers can enjoy leisurely nature walks as an art activity. Each student will inevitably discover one special object--a pine needle, a flower, a bug or a rabbit, for instance. Using field guides, parents can help their children positively identify and learn about what they have found. Then, the children can draw their objects on a page in a nature notebook, dating and labeling it with its common and Latin names. These nature notebooks can become cherished memory books that represent some of your best memories of homeschooling your family.
Art field trips, art appreciation activities and nature studies can give homeschool students a greater awareness of the visual world. A good homeschool art curriculum teaches students how to draw well and builds a child's artistic skill level. According to Brenda Ellis, author of the "Artistis Pursuits" curriculum, "Formulated lessons in composition, technique and materials provide the understanding needed to be able to put what they see in the world onto paper in a skillful and knowledgeable way."
For instance, while studying a prehistoric cave painting of a horse, an art curriculum may teach the student how to identify the use of line, color, texture, shape or space from the painting. For shapes, students can practice drawing animals from various shapes before they re-create the cave painting on a paper mural.