Art in Our Homeschool (And Why We Finally Ditched the Curriculum)
Three curricula, two years, and zero children who liked art class. Then we stopped doing art class and started making art. Here's what that actually looks like.
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I bought three different homeschool art curricula in two years.
All of them were fine. Organized, well-sequenced, with projects tied to famous artists and historical periods. All of them produced children who did the project because I asked them to and did not touch art materials again until the following week's lesson.
One afternoon I abandoned the curriculum entirely and just put out watercolors, paper, and a cup of water and said nothing.
My daughter painted for an hour and a half. She had never done that before.
What Happened When We Stopped Doing Art Class
The shift was not as dramatic as a single afternoon makes it sound. We did not throw out structure entirely. What we changed was the relationship between art and assignments.
Instead of: here is the technique, here is the project, here is the finished product we are going for.
We moved to: here are the materials, here is a beautiful thing to look at, here is time.
The prompts we kept were observation-based. "Go outside and draw something interesting you find." "Draw the inside of this flower as large as you can." "Spend ten minutes drawing the same chair from three different angles."
These prompts give a direction without dictating an outcome. Children who struggle with open blank pages often do well with an observational anchor. They are not trying to make something beautiful. They are trying to look at something true.
The Supplies That Changed Things
Not every art supply performs equally. The materials that have made the biggest difference:
Watercolors. Not the little plastic trays. Real pans in an actual tray. The difference in color depth and workability is immediate.
Good paper. Watercolor especially requires appropriate paper. Student-grade cold press watercolor paper (90 lb or heavier) costs more than copy paper and transforms the experience completely.
Colored pencils that actually blend. The waxy Crayola colored pencils children normally use are fine for some things and frustrating for layering. A small set of oil-based pencils opened up techniques my kids had given up on.
Sketchbooks. A dedicated sketchbook changes how children treat their art. It is theirs. Not a sheet pulled from a stack. Not a worksheet to turn in. A book they are filling over time.
Artist Study: the One Structured Thing That Stayed
One thing I kept from the formal curriculum world: artist study.
Once a month, we spend about twenty minutes with a single artist. We look at several of their works together. I share a few facts about their life and the period they worked in. Then we try something inspired by their technique or subject matter.
This is different from a lesson. There is no "correct" version of a Monet-style painting. We are just looking, absorbing, and seeing what happens when we pick up our own materials after.
My daughter's watercolor work shifted noticeably after we spent a month with Winslow Homer. My son started paying attention to shadows after we spent three weeks looking at Rembrandt. These were not direct imitations. They were something better: influence absorbed naturally through sustained looking.
Where Free Art Education Lives
The Art of Education University posts free content. Khan Academy has an impressive art history library, free and well-organized.
Google Arts & Culture lets you walk through museum galleries digitally at very high resolution. My kids have spent hours here. Zoom in on brushstrokes. See the under-drawing beneath a Vermeer. This is something even visiting the museum in person cannot always give you.
YouTube. The drawing and watercolor tutorial communities on YouTube are extensive and often extremely good. We have found tutorials by artists who are genuinely skilled and genuinely generous with what they know.
What Art in a Homeschool Is Actually For
I want to say this plainly because I spent too long thinking about it the wrong way.
Art in a homeschool is not preparation for an art exam. It is not resume-building. It is not even primarily about developing technical skill, though skill is a genuine good.
Art is for learning to look. Learning to look at a flower, a face, a street corner, a piece of music, a mathematical proof. Learning that looking takes time and that the reward comes from not looking away.
That habit of sustained attention is transferable to every subject you will ever teach.
The art curriculum is optional. The habit is not.
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Written by
The High Vibe Homeschool Team
We are a homeschool family that has been doing this for seven years across three kids. We write about what we have actually tried, what failed, what surprised us, and what we would do again. No credentials. Just lived experience.
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