I love getting things for nothing. My close friends know that on any given day I can be found picking through someone's trash, shopping at a garage sale or thrift store, bartering services, negotiating a price, or surfing the Internet for free resources. Sometimes this gets me into trouble … but more often than not, I end up with a pretty good thing!

Homeschooling for FREE is what this e-Newsletter is all about. Do you know about all of the resources available to homeschoolers? I venture to say that there are more than you and I can count! Each issue I will focus on a theme - art, music, reading, science, etc. I will have wonderful articles written by experts in their field of frugality. I will provide interesting Internet links for your enjoyment. The Old Schoolhouse Magazine may even have some things to give away! Homeschooling does NOT have to break the budget. It CAN be done very inexpensively!

The debut issue of Homeschooling for FREE will focus on art. Do you enjoy teaching art? Or is it one of those subjects you find hard to teach? Does art education somehow end up on the "back burner" of your schedule each week? It certainly does in our home. I like to think of myself as a pretty creative person - I love scrapbooking, taking pictures, doing crafty things with my kids - but teaching them art or how to draw sometimes seems overwhelming. Stick figures are about all I can drum up - and even those aren't very good! I certainly don't feel confident in this academic area. I bet I'm not alone.

Thanks to the Internet, and of course the library, there are literally tons of resources available to help us teach our kids about art. How about making a lapbook focused on a specific artist? Check out Cindy Rushton's website (www.cindyrushton.com/Lapbooking.html) for lots of great articles about this very effective teaching tool! Cindy has written a wonderful piece for us this month about how to make teaching art EASY! Also, check out www.notebooking.org. Lapbooking (or notebooking, as some call it) is a project that kids of all ages can do - even preschoolers. Print out a picture of the artist from the Internet and have them cut it out and glue it on a piece of paper with a glue stick. Find other works by the artist and let them go wild! All preschoolers (at least the ones I know) love scissors and glue sticks!

Have your older children research an artist, or a work by the artist, and make their own lapbook. Or what about having them design a website and teaching someone else about the artist? There are tons of free website hosting areas on the Internet. Check out www.bravenet.com or type in "free websites" in the search bar at www.google.com. What teenager is going to pass up a chance to be on the computer?

In addition to Cindy Rushton, our guest writer this month is Karine Bauch from Masterpiece Art Instruction. Karine lives in my town, and I had the wonderful privilege of having coffee with her a few weeks ago. She is a fellow homeschooling mom with a passion for art! She teaches art classes in her home, at our local library, and through her Phonics of Drawing CD. Karine will be answering that age-old homeschooling question: Do I really need to teach art?

Join me in welcoming Karine Bauch.

Julie Nott, Editor
Homeschooling for FREE e-Newsletter

By Karine Bauch, Masterpiece Art Instruction

When asked by other home educators if teaching art is essential to education, of course I answer with a resounding "Yes!" because I am an art teacher. But more than that, I have seen how using art in the academic subjects, such as science, history, and geography, can greatly enhance learning. Formal art instruction should be a subject in each child's education.

I love the classical approach to homeschooling, because it helps the teacher see all twelve years planned out in the three stages of the Trivium: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. These stages can be likened to the steps taken when creating a painting: the sketch, the under painting, and the finished work. As a professional art educator, I apply these principles when teaching art to young people.

Let me relate the Trivium stages to the creative process and suggest artistic areas to be studied at the various ages:

Grammar Stage (Grades 1-4): The Sketch
Children at this age can learn concrete facts without analysis - like a 2-dimensional drawing. This is the age to memorize and imitate high-quality works and build a foundation for the next two stages.

At this stage, the focus of art education should be on the following areas:

1. Mastering basic shapes and lines
2. Introduction to dry drawing mediums (pencil, charcoal, pastel)
3. Basic color theory (primary, secondary, and complimentary colors)
4. Simple shading and shadowing techniques
5. Imitating styles from classical artists

Logic Stage (Grades 5-8): The Under Painting
Logic-age students want to analyze and understand - like a sketch that has been filled in with color and shading. The concrete facts are "pulled together" with the color of logic.

In addition to practicing the above mentions topics, the following should be added:

1. Perspective (1-point, 2-point, and atmospheric)
2. Introduction to water-based painting mediums (watercolors, tempera)
3. Intermediate color theory (tertiary, monochromatic, and analogous colors)
4. Intermediate shading and shadowing techniques

Rhetoric Stage (Grades 9-12): The Finished Work
Rhetoric students are adults who are capable of expression built on facts and analysis - like a fully rendered painting. Style and expression are the finishing touches that make the student and the painting a work of art!

The student is now ready for the addition of the following:

1. Composition
2. Advanced study of perspective
3. Advanced shading and shadowing techniques
4. Introduction to oil and acrylic paints
5. Advanced color theory (color mixing)
6. Development of individual style
7. Expression

Visit Karine's website, Teach Art at Home, where you will find many free lessons on drawing, shading, and style as well as projects that weave art into other subjects. You will also find full-color, free art projects - such as Salt Clay Mosaics for learning about the early Christian church, Sumi-e Painting when studying Japanese culture, and creating leaf prints for tree identification. Her multi-level art curriculum, The Phonics of Drawing CD, teaches these concepts to ages 6-18, all on one CD! For a limited time only, she has a complete supply kit (CD included) available for 20% off!. These kits make great birthday gifts!

An adventure in art history by Educational Web Adventures
www.eduweb.com/insideart

Explore the world of art and artists through this interactive timeline and glossary. Learn about the color wheel, the elements and principles of art, and much more!
www.sanford-artedventures.com/study.study.html

ArtEdventures are interactive online games for teachers and students. Discover how great artists made their famous works - while learning tips and techniques for creating your own art!
www.sanford-artedventures.com/play/play.html

Explore the tools that artists use - such as line, color, and balance - to build works of art.
www.artsconnected.org/toolkit/

Resources, lesson plans, and tips to enhance the teaching end of art history.
www.arthistory.about.com/od/educator_parent_resources/

Along with Donna's other useful forms, she also has great FREE art resources:
www.art.donnayoung.org/index.htm

Search the art history archives of The History Channel.

Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History

A&E Cable Channel offers daily educational programming. Search the database of supplemental teacher guides.

Here you can explore art from around the world. All artworks are from the Denver Art Museum.

Download dozens of 3D-Papercraft projects for free. Origami, animals, kids, toys, science, buildings, seasons, and costumes at www.bj.canon.co.jp/english/3D-papercraft/.

Sign up for the Dover Children's Book Sampler.

If you'd rather stick with crafts for right now, here's a great site!
www.makingfriends.com/xmas_crafts.htm

Psssst! Speaking of FREE stuff … would you like to win something? Kate Kessler, our Product Reviews Manager, is having an Art Contest at www.HomeschoolBlogger.com/TOSOnlineLab. We have several Draw•Write•Now Books from Barker Creek to give away! Hurry over and see what Kate's got cookin'!

Are you looking for lesson ideas, worksheets, crafts, or coloring pages? Look no further. Resources for Christian Teachers is a website with links for teachers, homeschool parents, and children's ministry workers.

Lesson plans and worksheets are listed by subject areas. Ideas for holidays are organized by the months in which they fall. There are also links to puzzles and games, and jigsaw puzzles to play online. If you are looking for help with making and using puppets, you'll find links on the puppet page. Other pages on the site include Student Awards, Technology, Holidays, and many more.

Visit Resources for Christian Teachers today at www.teacherhelp.org.

By Cindy Rushton

Picture Studies: The Way to Study Art
Have no idea where to begin covering the fine arts? I remember just how overwhelmed I was at the thought of teaching art! I wondered how on earth to begin - I had no idea what to use, who WAS an artist (really!), or how to answer any questions that might pop up as my children studied. So, what did I do? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!

Several years of homeschooling went by. Still nothing, absolutely nothing! Well, maybe something - more procrastination! I just did not know anything about teaching art. I had no idea where to begin, so … I didn't! Until I met Charlotte Mason through her great books! She had such great advice for teaching art (well, every other subject too!) that I immediately had all of the help I needed to actually BEGIN! Here are a few of her helpful quotes:

"When children have begun regular lessons (that is, as soon as they are six), this sort of study of pictures should not be left to chance, but they should take one artist after another, term by term, and study quietly some half-dozen reproductions of his work in the course of a term … we cannot measure the influence that one or another artist has upon the child's sense of beauty, upon his power of seeing, as in a picture, the common sights of life; he is enriched more than we know in having really looked at even a single picture."

"It will be noticed that the work done on these pictures is done by the children themselves. There is no talk about schools of painting, little about style; consideration of these matters comes in later life, but the first and most important thing is to KNOW the pictures themselves. As in a worthy book, we leave the author to tell his own tale, so do we trust the picture to tell its tale through the medium the artist gave it. In the region of art as elsewhere, we shut out the middleman."

What does this look like in our home? We have made this very, very simple. We decided to begin Art Print Notebooks for each of our children many, many years ago. We buy them prints that we find along the way. For example, we found great prints at our local Wal-Mart. They were in the "ready-to-frame" section (with picture frames). Wal-Mart has prints all different sizes, but we found the 8.5 X 11 inch pictures that are perfect for our notebooks. These prints were also so reasonable (about $1 each) that we were able to let the children choose their "own" artists and prints to study. We took those prints home, placed them on cardstock paper, slid them into sheet protectors, and added them to their notebooks.

Elisabeth loves to try to draw "like the artist," so she also has many original sketches that she has drawn as she "tried her hand" at copying the master! We added those to her notebook too! We have also found postcards, handouts, and mementos with great prints on them too. We add them to the notebooks. Oh, that is not all! Most of my favorite art museums (the Louvre, the Metropolitan Art Museum, the Smithsonian, etc.) have art "galleries" online. When we see great prints in their galleries, we simply clip and paste them into our Microsoft Word program so we can print out copies for our notebooks and thumbnails for our timelines. I look for prints everywhere! You will see them now too! We don't have to spend a fortune to develop a nice collection that introduces our children to art and artists.

So, what do you do after you have a print? I had no idea myself. Again, Charlotte Mason said it best in her book School Education:

"We attach a good deal of value to what we call picture talks, that is: a reproduction of a suitable picture, by Millet, for example, is put into the children's hands, and they study it by themselves. Then, the children of from six to nine describe the picture, giving all the details and showing by a few lines on the blackboard where is such a tree or a such a house; judging if they can the time of day; discovering the story if there be one. The older children add to this some study of the lines of composition, light and shade, the particular style of the master; and reproduce from memory certain details. The object of these lessons is that the pupils should learn how to appreciate rather than how to
produce."

This is REALLY what a picture study is all about! Appreciation! Letting the children see! Letting the artist "speak" directly to the child! We do not have to plan the lessons. We do not have to ask (or answer!) the questions! All we have to do is introduce our children to the greatest minds and let the artist be the teacher. Let the children ask the questions. Let the print answer the questions! Easy? Oh, yes! Picture studies … the easy way! Still not clear? Well, let me take you to OUR home so you can see how we teach picture studies, step by step.

Picture Studies Step by Step
Review previous picture studies. Begin by asking the children to "remember what their last picture-talk was about, and what artist was famous for the painting ..." (Charlotte Mason). It is amazing how much information the children will recall and be able to share with one another! Review information about the artist's life. My favorite resource for learning more about the lives of the artists is Barry Stebbing's book God and the History of Art. It is the most detailed resource available. Plus, Barry writes from a Christian worldview - a priceless resource!

Show the art. I teach my children all at the same time! Show them a print, giving them plenty of time to look and enjoy. Curl up with the print like an old book! Make a memory! If each child is developing her own notebook, simply have a family time for all to share "their prints" and what they are learning from them!

Discuss the art. DO NOT lecture or explain the print! Charlotte Mason wrote in Home Education, "Give them the picture … to look at, and ask them to find out all they can about it themselves, and to think what idea the artist had in his mind, and what idea or ideas he meant his picture to convey to us." Let your children alone with the artist - you will be amazed at how perceptive children are AND how much can be learned by just letting your children come into direct contact with the art. If you do want to share more, you may want to read a biography or a short story about the artist and his life, but this is not necessary (only if you want to!). The main emphasis is to really look at the print and see details! Charlotte Mason wrote in Toward a Philosophy of Education, "After a short story of the artist's life and a few sympathetic words about his trees or his skies, his river-paths or his figures, the little pictures are studied one at a time; that is, the children learn not merely to see a picture, but to LOOK AT IT, taking in every detail."

Turn the print over and let the child describe it from memory. Let your children recall the art in any of several forms, such as narration, drawing, or discussion. Charlotte Mason describes how to do this and WHY to do this in Toward a Philosophy of Education: "Then the picture is turned over and the children tell what they have seen - dog driving a flock of sheep along a road but nobody with the dog … Nothing is left out … there is enough for half an hour's talk and memory in this little reproduction of a great picture and the children will know it wherever they see it, whether a signed proof, a copy in oils, or the original itself in one of our galleries … In this way, children become acquainted with a hundred, or hundreds, of great artists during their school life and it is an intimacy which never forsakes them." Children are remarkably attentive! They see an incredible number of details! Asking them to recall the art encourages them to notice even more details. Give them a blank sheet of paper to let them have a chance to try to re-create the print themselves. Keep the drawings and narrations in a notebook just for art. If you have extra prints, you can even let the children have their own for their notebooks as well!

Turn the print over again to see how accurately they recalled it.

Display the print for a week. At the end of the week, we usually discuss the painting and details that we have enjoyed from the print. If the subject matter is religious, we look up and read the Bible account in Scripture. (For example, when we studied Rembrandt's The Raising of the Cross, we looked up the Gospel account of the crucifixion. This adds to the emotion of the print and helps us to feel as though we are going back in time to Rembrandt's studio - as well as to the cross.)

Display seasonal prints at appropriate times. We love bringing out prints like The Raising of the Cross by Rembrandt and Cimabue's The Crucifixion at Easter and viewing Fabriano's The Adoration of the Magi and Duccio's The Nativity during Advent. They compliment our decorations and our festive moods! Also, I do this with music such as Handel's Messiah for Christmas every year.

Help your children begin their own collection of fine art. Great prints are all around us. Encourage your children to become art collectors from an early age. Then, their lifestyle can teach the lessons with very little preparation on your part. How? Look at your local Wal-Mart in the picture frames or mats. Our local store has a whole island display with Beatrix Potter, Monets, etc. The 8½ X 11 inch prints are only $1 each. Each week, you could invest in a print for your family. In only a year, the collection would fill an entire notebook. We build our collections by using these and print books (we just found some gorgeous books for only $3 each last week!) on different artists and all of their life works. We also collect postcards that we find at museums and historical sites. A collection adds up quickly and does not need to cost a fortune.

Read stories or biographical sketches about the artist. There is nothing like a biography to pull you into the life of another person. Artists are no different. Their biographies are guaranteed to teach more than just about their lives. Your family will be introduced to the entire culture of the time.

Turn your children loose! It should be remembered that this is not just another thing for YOU to do! I love what Charlotte Mason wrote in her book Toward a Philosophy of Education:

"It will be noticed that the work done on these pictures is done by the children themselves. There is no talk about schools of painting, little about style; consideration of these matters comes in later life, but the first and most important thing is to KNOW the pictures themselves. As in a worthy book, we leave the author to tell his own tale, so we trust the picture to tell its tale through the medium the artist gave it. In the region of art as elsewhere, we shut out the middleman."

What About Original Artwork?
One of the most common questions we first think about in regard to teaching art is, what about original art? What about teaching drawing? Where do we begin teaching our children the basics?

This was a very difficult area for me. I still struggle in this area. What did I do, especially since I wanted to ensure that my children had proper instruction in drawing? Well, first of all, I consider this area much like cooking or sewing. There are areas in which I feel very "able" to teach to my children - such as language, spelling, literature, science, and history. However, drawing is definitely not one of those areas! In fact, cooking and sewing were not areas for me for a long, long time. How did I fall in love with those subjects? How did I learn how to cook and sew? I first watched others who were good at it! Then, I bought the best books (and patterns) out there that could take me step-by-step through the process. Then, as time went on, I began to add my own touches to my goodies. Now, I feel very good about both areas - so much so that I have designed my own patterns and my own recipes (a real accomplishment for me, if you know what I mean!).

In homeschooling, I have found that I am simply not as good in some areas as I am in others. Yet this hindrance need not cripple the education of my children. Instead, I have found some keys to help teach these areas! Even drawing!

First, I have put my children in direct contact with artists. Artists love their art and art by others! Little things that they teach along the way become awesome lessons, not just as techniques, but even more so as a passion for the subject! Second, there is a certain reality about their art. Some of our favorite artists are either dead or out of reach for day-by-day instruction - except when we get in direct contact with them through their art and through biographies about them. For this reason, we have brought those artists to our home as our teachers through copies of their prints and their biographies. All we have to do is sit down and let the artist teach to us. The lessons are priceless! Finally, nothing can teach drawing like actually having the best tools and using them on a regular basis to create! So, how have we accomplished teaching this study when it is not my study, when I do not know much about it? We give our children access to artists past and present. We give them the best curriculum to help them learn techniques of the masters. We give them the best tools and supplies. And we turn them loose! Drawing instruction can be that easy!

You can visit Cindy Rushton at www.cindyrushton.com or www.homeschoolingtheeasyway.com. She has many more encouraging articles just like this one! You can also sign up for her free e-Newsletters. Tell her you saw her article in "Homeschooling for FREE"!

Join us next month as we take a look at music education ... can it really be done inexpensively - or even FREE? Send your best ideas and suggestions to me at FreeHomeschool@TheHomeschoolMagazine.com with the subject line "Music Education."

Paul and Gena Suarez, publishers of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, just released a brand-new e-book, Secrets of Successful Homeschooling, to show you that "Yes! You CAN homeschool!" Whether you are a new parent thinking ahead to your family's educational years, a homeschooler in the trenches, or a veteran who has "been there, done that," this e-book holds something for everyone.

"You will cry, laugh, and feel inspired at the different stories ... I think that this book will springboard a new homeschooler to venture out into the unknown and inspire veteran moms to hang in there and keep going."  - Karen Flores, homeschool mom of two boys

Affordable and instantly downloadable, this e-book would be perfect to help you start out the new year inspired, motivated, and encouraged in your homeschooling journey.

To purchase your copy of Secrets to Successful Homeschooling, visit

www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com/subscribe/secrets.php

 Looking for a way to earn extra money? 

Sign up for our affiliate program and you can earn 66% of each sale by telling your friends about our e-book. Sign up here:

www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com/subscribe/affiliate.php