Anyone HS w/ focus on creative arts?

[VisionaryMom]

I'm toying with hs ideas right now. I really am missing the more "artsy" life I lived pre-kids and am trying to separate *that* from my children's needs. So feel free to tell me if I'm not doing a good job at that.

DS has intense interest in all things considered "creative," "right-brained," etc. He absolutely loves cooking, and he will choose a craft project over any other activity. He begs to paint all the time.

So in thinking of homeschool, I'm leaning toward working with a more creative arts-type of curriculum, which would be heavy on music, art, and storytelling (eventually writing). I would include learning "hard skills," but in my mind, it's okay that they're secondary to the softer humanities-type skills. I envision days learning to make candles, restore furniture, and coordinating local non-profit fundraisers.

Am I wrong to plan like this? I know it may change as DS ages and interests change, but I don't want to do him a disservice by not focusing more on textbook learning.

[theretohere]

Originally Posted by BrandiRhoades

I'm toying with hs ideas right now. I really am missing the more "artsy" life I lived pre-kids and am trying to separate *that* from my children's needs. So feel free to tell me if I'm not doing a good job at that.

DS has intense interest in all things considered "creative," "right-brained," etc. He absolutely loves cooking, and he will choose a craft project over any other activity. He begs to paint all the time.

So in thinking of homeschool, I'm leaning toward working with a more creative arts-type of curriculum, which would be heavy on music, art, and storytelling (eventually writing). I would include learning "hard skills," but in my mind, it's okay that they're secondary to the softer humanities-type skills. I envision days learning to make candles, restore furniture, and coordinating local non-profit fundraisers.

Am I wrong to plan like this? I know it may change as DS ages and interests change, but I don't want to do him a disservice by not focusing more on textbook learning.

Well, I don't see what you are talking about as soft on "hard skills" at all! Coooking requires an incredible amount of math- fractions and measurements, temperatures... even with how you portion.
Fundraisers are great practice in money, telling time, and counting people.
Candle making is science and math again.
It's all in how you look at it.

[LauraLoo]

I'm not really sure that you necessarily have to target curriculum with an arts focus. Almost anything can be demonstrated in an artsy way -- illustrations, story writing, model making, manipulatives and so forth. DS does this naturally - when he learns something he translates it into an art form. Sometimes I have to change it up a bit, since I'm not necessarily so art focused. We've been studying ancient Egypt and tomorrow we're going to make model mummies (with sticks, cotton, paper strips, glue, tin foil, paints and some cardboard.) I just googled for "Art projects and Ancient Egypt" and a ton of stuff came up. It's an easy and inexpensive way to get ideas. He's already drawn the hieroglyphic alphabet and written letters to people. There's even Ancient Egypt dancing and music on You Tube. He retains so much more when it becomes meaningful and fun like this.

[LeftField]

We unschool. I would guess that we focus on creative arts. My kids do love science. But since I'm a liberal arts person, I guess I tend to expose them to things that I love and it results in a high arts exposure.

I really enjoy classical, opera and jazz music so I tend to play that a lot. My oldest discovered "the train song" as a toddler, which is a piece by Rossini entitled, "un petit train de plaisir" (sp?). If you listen to it, it actually does sound like a train. So we used to pretend that we were on a train and we would accelerate when the music accelerated, etc. My MIL started buying them classical CDs like, "the Planets" by Holtz, "A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra", and others. I bought them, "Peter and the Wolf" because I remember loving it as a child. I bought them a children's compilation of opera favorites (many of us would recognize numerous "Bugs Bunny" songs on it). Essentially, I played what I enjoyed and then my children became used to the sound and they also enjoyed it. I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it.

If I had goals for my children's upbringing, wrt art education, it was that they get exposed to the arts in a low pressure, fun way and that a sense of excitement and appreciation would be created. I felt strongly about it in the beginning because my children are male and I recognize that males in our society are strongly discouraged from art appreciation. Males are taught at a very young age that such things are effeminate and boring. I figured that I needed to counter some strong cultural influences to give my sons a chance to actually enjoy the arts. My main concern is that they might miss out on some genuine enjoyment if I didn't get to them before society did.

Anyway, I take them to the art museum. I wish I could live in the art museum so it's a pleasure to take my kids there. Our art museum is free so we visit frequently. I started taking them as toddlers because I thought that they could identify visual things that pleased them. Even if we only spent 2 seconds on a painting, it was worth it IMO. In the beginning, I initiated a lot of it by pointing familiar things out like "Look, a tree! I see a waterfall. Look at all the red!" To me, the art museum was like a giant picture book for children.

I started looking for arts exposure through: the library, the local symphony and the local Children's Theatre. The local symphony, in cooperation with the library system, has an education program for young children. It usually takes the form of very short classical concerts, often accompanied by a story. The Children's Theatre provided short free plays and also the typical selection of musicals and plays. I think my husband was shocked at the amount of money we spent for the four of us to see, "Pinnochio" performed, and the cost keeps us from attending such events except on rare occasion, but it was well worth it. We all enjoyed ourselves so much. To this day, I vividly remember my mother taking me out of school to see, "Peter Pan" performed in Boston. Oh, we also see the Nutcracker at Christmas, which is wonderful. I check on my local homeschool list to see if there are any educational discounts for these types of programs.

As my children got older, they became interested in taking a class here and there. My oldest loves taking art classes at the museum. My youngest son decided to take ballet, which he loves. And they both take drama, the main thrust of which is fun make-believe.

I can't think of anything else. Anyway, I wanted to respond in the event that I could share some helpful ideas. I love the arts!

[LeftField]

I thought of another thing wrt creative writing.

This is an activity which my children have enjoyed on occasion. I create the beginning of a story for them and then we all take turns adding an event. For example, I could say, 'Once upon a time, there were two boys. While playing in their yard, they found a secret door in a hill. They opened it up and found..."

"Ok, ds, your turn. What did they find?"

Let's say that he says, "a dusty bottle." I would say, "They decided to open the bottle. When they did so..."

Now it's my other son's turn. He might say, "A cloud of blue smoke came out!"

We keep taking turns to create the story together.

Sometimes, you can get stuck in repetitive loops in these activities. Like, we had one where the children found some bottles on a table. When they drank the bottles, strange changes happened to their bodies (kind of like Alice in Wonderland!). Every time one child would invent us drinking and turning into a mosquito or a shrinking person, the other child would then find another table of bottles and it kept going back and forth. During that time, I added some lines to get us away from the bottles and out of the loop.

[AnalogWife]

Our DS is only 18 mos, but my musician DH has lots of dreams of getting him into music and also taking him to his recording studio to teach him "the biz"...which is also technical, but high artsy focus.

[moominmamma]

Copying and pasting my 14yo's Learning Plan for this year, because it illustrates the highly creative-arts-based nature of our unschooling. This year she decided to add some academics through part-time school attendance, so you'll see some of that stuff in there, for the first time ever. Otherwise, we've definitely got an arts-centred homeschooling program.

Languaging
High school writing class
Reading ad lib

Science
Science 10 course

Humanities
Trip to SE Asia

2nd Language
Trip to SE Asia
French -- look for a textbook to complement Rosetta Stone

Math/Logic
Math 10 course

Wellness
Gym 3x/week

Creativity
Violin lessons -- in Calgary, monthly
Accompaniment sessions -- investigate this in Calgary
Corazon Youth Choir -- weekly, plus tour in April
Valhalla Community Choir -- weekly
Osprey String Quartet
Community Orchestra
Possibility of doing Schubert Trout Quintet?
Piano lessons -- in Nelson, weekly
Violin group classes
Summit Strings chamber ensemble
Accompaniment workshop -- November
Joint piano violin/piano recital project with J. (friend) in late spring

Miranda

[SagMom]

Originally Posted by BrandiRhoades

So in thinking of homeschool, I'm leaning toward working with a more creative arts-type of curriculum, which would be heavy on music, art, and storytelling (eventually writing). I would include learning "hard skills," but in my mind, it's okay that they're secondary to the softer humanities-type skills.

We unschool, so I haven't devised a curriculum, and we've never focused on textbook learning. My dd has always had a heavy interest in creative arts.

Over the years, she's explored all kinds of fibre arts: knitting, crochet, weaving, spinning, felting, sewing. She's done beading and jewelry-making. She's made soap and candles. She's done pottery. She reads voraciously and has written book reviews, short stories, poetry, fan fiction, journal pieces, essays and novellas. She loves to cook and come up with her own recipes--she is vegan and has allergies so ingredients are carefully considered.

She's never sat down for a reading class, or a writing lesson, or followed a course of study in science or history, (there was one year where she worked through a basic math workbook) But she is well-versed in all of these things because she's learned them while fulfilling her creative interests. Everything is connected, and I've found that when you're not directing things, topics lead one into another in surprising ways.

I definitely don't think it's a disservice to focus on a child's interests--it's what we've done all along.

[VisionaryMom]

Originally Posted by theretohere

Well, I don't see what you are talking about as soft on "hard skills" at all! Coooking requires an incredible amount of math- fractions and measurements, temperatures... even with how you portion.
Fundraisers are great practice in money, telling time, and counting people.
Candle making is science and math again.
It's all in how you look at it.

This is my hope. DS loves cooking so much that he's beginning to ask a lot of questions about how I know how much of everything to put, and he understands the concept that the lines and numbers are for measuring. Last night we were cleaning the basement, and he found an old poker set we haven't used for ages. He thought the "checkers," i.e. poker chips were fun, and we made up an addition and subtraction game with them. He had a *blast* playing that for about an hour. So I'm hoping that he will learn those foundational concepts through exploration.

[mama-aya]

I think it sounds lovely!
We aren't artists by any stretch of the imagination, though I am "crafty" I guess- I knit and sew and do papier-mache and stuff like that- but it was really important to me in thinking about EDUCATION that my children see ART as part of life, a natural response to a beautiful world, and that they grew up familiar with good art supplies, techniques, different artists and ways of seeing and talking about the world, so that they would have those on command as they grew up and maybe the world didn't seem to beautiful all the time. I wanted them to have lots of resources to deal with whatever happens in their lives, and I think the arts are an amazing way to deal with, and share, teach, and inspire others about all kinds of issues, experiences, thoughts, and hopes. I see arts of all kinds getting slashed from schools, public and private in favor of academics, and I don't think that is good for kids or society.
We're also a very politically motivated and active family, and having children who are well-read, well-spoken, sort of "properly trained" and able to interact with adults (and politicians, too) is very important.
One of the things I love best about homeschooling is that our kids can be active participants in our lives- working on campaigns, manning booths at fairs, hosting fundraisers with us, traveling, all of that, instead of stuck at home with a babysitter while we do these things we think are important, or God-forbid, us having to give up our interests for the sake of family-time!
We homeschool from a Waldorf perspective, which is based in arts and nature. DH has been really nervous that maybe we weren't doing enough academics- not enough memorization of facts, no workbooks, no flashcards, no textbooks. But our older son, who just started third grade, just did a big huge achievement test (I was a little nervous because he'd never even had a test before) and scored in the 99th percentile across the board (reading 9th-12th grade, language usage 8th-12th grade, math 7th-10th grade) so DH feels great all of the sudden about what we're doing, and is now a big advocate for teaching through the arts. Hooray!

[Madame Pomfrey]

You might consider Waldorf-inspired holistic homeschooling. It is truly based in the arts in a way where ALL aspects of learning involve arts & movement. There's a great book by Agnes Nobel, Educating Through Art. Plus a bvery practical book that I use regulary in our homeschool is "Modeling" by Arthur Auer - it also has really good explanations of the ideas of teaching fully through the arts.

Here's a quick, online view of the arts as they are used in Waldorf ed. This was put together by a Waldorf school supply store:

The Seven Arts

The goal of Waldorf is to bring our the whole child by educating through the arts - not necessaily to create artists, but to help the children find their true inner selves as they learn. Art isn't just added in - it IS the curriculum.

Best wishes,

Lucie

[Mama Shifra]

Charles Schulz, the creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip, had taken correspondence courses from Art Instruction Schools (www.artinstructionschools.edu) when he was in high school. You may want to check it out. Also, some of the other correspondence high schools like University of Nebraska (http://nebraskahs.unl.edu) and Oak Meadow have art courses available.