Little Homeschool Blessings: ARTistic Pursuits: The Way They SEE It {Review}

ARTistic Pursuits sent us The Way They See It for preschool to review.

First Thoughts

We've reviewed for ARTistic Pursuits in the past (Elementary 4-5: Book 1 and Early Elementary K-3: Book 3); and every time I get a new book, I'm more and more pleased with the company. Li and I were so excited to get to work on art together. The girls and I have been doing art projects for years, but many of them seemed to messy and difficult to include Li. Since Li and I are doing preschool this year and he loves drawing and painting, I thought this would be a great opportunity to get some structured art lessons in with just him and I.

~Discover Art Lesson

What is it?

ARTistic Pursuits carries curriculum for grades preschool through high school. The books include lessons on visual art, modern painting and sculpture, drawing, and color theory.

The Way They SEE It: A Book for EVERY PARENT About the Art Children Make is designed for preschool children. It is a 90 page spiral bound book in full color. There are 26 lessons and a section that covers first skills for scissors, pencil, crayon, and marker, adhesives, and brushes and paint. It is designed to encourage awareness, exploration, and creativity.

Each lesson from Section 1 has 3 parts:

~Grown-Up Talk has information for parents that explains a piece of the artistic process and development at the preschool stage. There are key points provided for the parent as well.

~Picture Talk provides a picture of a piece of art in full color and dialog with information and questions to discuss with your child about the art work.

~Project provides directions for the parent (in black print) and dialog that you can read to your child (in slightly larger, blue print) with an art activity for your child.

~It's about the Process Picture Talk

Section 2 provides parents with information about how your child should use basic artistic tools and activities to practice with those tools.

~Discover Art Lesson

Recommended Art Supplies
The supplies needed for The Way They SEE It are very minimal (we actually had all of these on hand all ready or could make them ourselves). You have the option of purchasing an art supply pack, if you'd rather get most everything in one place.

9" x 12" Drawing Paper
Construction Paper
Safety Scissors
Glue
Finger Paint
Art/Craft Brush
16"x12" Finger Paint Paper
9"x12" Watercolor Paper
Markers
Crayons
Watercolors
Play Dough
Roll of Shipping Paper
Basic Household Items

~ Identifying Colors Project

Time Frame
Reading over the Grown-Up Talk section took about 5 minutes and gathering supplies needed for the projects was about the same amount of time. The Picture Talk section was about 5 minutes of working together and then Li would spend anywhere from 5-15 minutes working on his project.

~Discover Art Lesson

Our Experience

We worked on the lessons a few times a week. Li enjoyed himself and the lessons provided me with an opportunity to give him good, quality lessons that required very little prep work on my part.

What Li has to Say

I got my own crayons for my art.

~Discover Art Lesson

I loved the finger painting project. It was so pretty.

~Mark-making Project

The play dough was awesome. I liked the block, truck, and spoon.

~Dough Project

I made a pig, cheetah, panda bear, elephant, submarine, fish and stream from when we went to the zoo.

~Going Places Project

Ha! Look at that thumb!

~Fingerprint Project

Recommendation
We'd recommend ARTistic Pursuits for artists of all ages. It is especially helpful for parents that don't have a lot of time to prepare materials and look for lessons.

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