art Archives

Build A Snowman Winter Art Activity for Kids

January 6, 2020 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

We live in the Deep South. In fact, I’ve always lived down here.

So I’ve built a snowman in real life…a total of one time. Even then, we ended up using a broken clothes hanger for the mouth, because we didn’t have coal.

But I still try to get in on the winter snowman fun with students.

And this fun Roll A Snowman winter art activity is great for indoor wintry-themed game play!

It’s a quick activity to set up and you can let students play it at centers or small groups!

Read on to see how to get your copy free! And, for more fun with snowmen, don’t miss our easy Coffee Filter Snowman Craft for kids!

Build A Snowman Winter Art Activity for Kids

To use this build a snowman roll and color winter art activity, you’ll need the following: (This post contains affiliate links. For details, see our Disclosure Policy.)

To get started, simply print the snowman coloring sheet and the six-sided paper die.

The die is color-coded, so students can see which colors to use on each part of the snowman.

Tip: I like to use cardstock for this activity, because the die holds up better for rolling when it’s printed on heavier paper.

Cut out the six-sided die, being sure to leave the foldable flaps in place. You’ll need to fold them in as you put the die together.

Use double-sided tape or a glue stick to assemble the die and then you’re good to go!

As students take turns rolling the die, they can color the section of the snowman as shown on the cube.

The last one to finish the snowman wins!

You can also use it as an individual activity and let early finishers work on this in between subjects.

Scroll down to get your copy of this Roll A Snowman Winter Art Activity – free!

Take a look at these other winter-themed learning ideas!

And be sure to follow my Winter Activities for Kids Pinterest board for more tips!

To get your copy of our Roll A Snowman Winter Art Activity, head over to my Teachers Pay Teachers store! It’s a downloadable freebie there.

Click the image or the link below to grab it!

>>> Roll A Snowman Winter Art Activity <<<

Portrait Style Homeschool Art Courses with Sparketh

September 28, 2018 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

My ten-year-old son is the artist in the family. And by that I mean he wants to be an artist. He’s very interested in drawing and painting, but sadly, neither his father nor I are qualified in the least to teach him those skills.

What’s more, we don’t have any local homeschool art programs that are affordable enough for us at the moment.

Last year, my son got to try the homeschool art courses from Sparketh and he was absolutely hooked. So when we found out that Sparketh now offers portrait style art courses, he jumped at the opportunity to try them.

In just a few days, he had produced his very first portrait – with no formal artistic training! It was amazing to watch. In fact, it actually made me want to try learning to paint myself.

Read on to see how Sparketh’s portrait style art courses work and how you can use them as a comprehensive homeschool art program with your family!

Disclosure: I received access to this program in exchange for this post and I was compensated for my time. All opinions are my own and I was not required to write a positive review.

Sparketh Portrait Style Homeschool Art Courses

Sparketh is an online video art program that offers various courses and projects for kids (and adults) to complete. Each course is broken into short videos that demonstrate exactly how to draw or paint a specific object or person.

As students go through each step, they gradually produce their own works of art.

In addition to their individual art project courses, Sparketh now offers an Art Style Portraits track with several portrait courses in various styles.

As you can see from the list, students can create portraits in Pop Art, Fauvism, Minimalism, and other specific artistic styles. There’s even a manga style course for comic fans!

My son wanted to begin with the Harlem Renaissance Portrait Course. In this project, students look at a snapshot and repaint it in the cultural style popular during the Harlem Renaissance – one of our favorite periods in history.

All he had to do was click “Join Course” and we were off and running!

Learning to Paint a Portrait with Sparketh Homeschool Art Courses

I should note here that we have tried other video art lessons. Here’s what sets Sparketh’s homeschool art course apart, in my opinion:

The courses are short, which keeps students from getting overwhelmed. The entire Harlem Renaissance Portrait course is only 31 minutes long.
The platform is very easy to follow. Students can read the supply list before getting started and then decide how much of the project they want to complete that day.
Individual steps are broken into separate short videos. This is excellent for kids who have attention concerns (like several of our children do).
The videos show the art instructors as they work. My son was able to pause the video and look directly at what the artist did and then recreate it himself.

Once he’d gathered his supplies (and we didn’t need many for this course), he got started.

The instructor showed him how to begin by sketching his portrait, which he did.

He simply paused the video to catch up and follow the instructor’s work.

Then he moved on to outlining his picture with marker.

Like so.

As you might be able to tell, he did the sketching and outlining all within one day. I had to make him stop for that afternoon. That’s how much he loved using Sparketh.

Later, he went back and added his watercolor paint and he was done!

I think he might have asked me for help to understand the instruction once during the entire course.

Sparketh is easy enough for a ten-year-old to follow all on his own, so it’s a stress-free homeschool art course for parents. You can just sign your child up for an account and let him or her work through the projects.

Art class for the year? Check.

Want to try Sparketh’s Portrait Style Art Courses with your child? Just sign up on the Sparketh website and let your child browse the list to find a project to try!

See how you can use also Sparketh to teach your child to draw in the post below!

Plus, follow my Art Ideas for Kids board on Pinterest to get more suggestions for homeschool art projects!

How to Afford Homeschooling eBook Download

Easy Art Lessons for Kids with Sparketh

July 13, 2017 by Selena Robinson 1 Comment

I love, love, love the arts. Watching them, that is.

Honestly, I’m not awesome at painting or sculpting or drawing. And the idea of trying to teach those skills to my kids was downright intimidating to me, which caused me to put it off over and over again.

My kids, though, were excited to learn to draw, paint, sculpt, and everything else. And I didn’t want to keep holding them back just because I was unsure about how to get them started.

That’s why I was so thrilled to get the opportunity to try the easy art lessons for kids from Sparketh! These totally online art courses offer complete video instructions for kids and teens (and anyone else really) and you don’t need any artistic experience at all to use it with your kids!

Read on to see how Sparketh Online Art Lessons can make it easy for even non-artistic parents – like me – to teach art at home!

Disclosure: I received access to this program in exchange for this post and I was compensated for my time. All opinions are my own and I was not required to write a positive review.

How Sparketh’s Easy Art Lessons for Kids Work

Sparketh was launched in July 2015 with online art courses. Since then, the course offerings have expanded to include tens of different lessons, including drawing and painting, in varying degrees of difficulty.

You can choose from Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced. Since we were using the program with our eight-year-old, we chose from the Beginner category. But I’m glad that he can move on to more advanced courses as his skills improve. That way, you don’t really “age out” of the curriculum.

One of the featured courses was the “Draw A Tree Frog” course. My guy is all about animals, so this was a natural fit for him.

Since we are raising kids with attention span issues, I was concerned about my son’s ability to stay interested and engaged throughout an entire course. So it was a pleasant surprise to see that many of the courses are fairly short – 30 minutes or less.

Even better, Sparketh Online Art Lessons are separated into several videos, which makes it easy to stop and start the course as needed. I also loved that the specific supplies were listed upfront, so I could browse for a class that used materials I already knew we had at home.

Using Sparketh’s Easy Art Lessons for Kids to Learn to Draw

Our eight-year-old has been wanting to learn to draw for the longest. He practices drawing things on his own, but he’s been wanting more structured lessons.

Since his auditory processing skills are not as well developed as his visual processing skills, having an online art video lesson that he could pause, rewind, and resume as needed was a wonderful help. Any time he was uncertain about what to do, he could just go back, watch it again, and gain more confidence.

As he learned in the course, the best way to begin a drawing is by sketching lightly.

Then you outline the finished sketch in ink pen and erase any unnecessary pencil marks.

Then – and only then – it’s time to add color. That was a critical step he’d been missing. Doing the foundation work early on helped him create a project he was proud of before finalizing it.

He really enjoyed using several different marker colors to make his tree frog look as realistic as possible.

I thought it was fantastic that Sparketh Online Art Lessons actually show the entire process of creating the work from start to finish. It made the lesson much more accessible for newbies. Going in, my son already felt that he could do the work right along with the artist.

Finally, he added a few finishing touches.

And that’s it!

(He styled the above photograph himself, complete with some of the artist’s tools he used.)

He was so proud of his work!

This is definitely going on the wall. And it was his very first lesson! I’m looking forward to seeing how much he progresses as he works through the different Sparketh Online Art Lessons.

Ready to try out Sparketh with your kids? Sign up for a free one-month trial to get your children started with easy art lessons for kids (and their not-so-artistic parents)!

Want to learn more about Sparketh? Follow the company on social media for news and updates about new courses, offers, and more!

And for more ways to add art into your homeschool, follow my Art Ideas for Kids board on Pinterest!

Art Study Coloring Books for Middle Schoolers

August 15, 2016 by Selena Robinson 2 Comments

Scrambling to find art study resources for your middle schooler this year? These art study coloring books for middle schoolers are absolutely awesome ways to study classic paintings!

We’ve loved these books and today – I’m giving four of them away to one of my readers! Woohoo!

Read on for more about these books and for your chance to win them!

Art Study Coloring Books for Middle Schoolers

Let’s face it: Studying classic art can be a bit of a challenge, especially if your tween is not into art. Getting to “recreate” classic masterpieces, though, can bring these artistic styles to life!

Take a look at these!

Color Your Own Impressionist Paintings

Color Your Own Famous American Paintings

Color Your Own Still Life Paintings

Color Your Own Italian Renaissance Paintings

Get more ideas for teaching art in your homeschool with my Art Appreciation board on Pinterest!

Now – for the fun part! You can enter to win all four of these coloring books, plus a set of colored pencils! Use the Giveaway Tools widget below to enter!

Entry -Form

Want to enter to win even more awesome resources for your homeschool year? Stop by the iHomeschool Network Gift Basket Giveaway to see all of the other amazing gift baskets you can enter to win!

Easy Nature Art: Leaf Painting for Kids

August 8, 2016 by Selena Robinson 8 Comments

I’m so excited to be participating in this year’s Paint-A-Thon sharing fun painting ideas for kids! In our family, we absolutely adore fall, so I thought “Why not paint with tree leaves?” And that’s what we did!

Unfortunately, it’s late summer in Georgia, which means we’re not going to have autumn-colored leaves for some time. 🙂 But we got out some paint, including fall-themed colors, and started up anyway!

Take a look at our easy nature art project: leaf painting for kids!

Want some more fall activities for kids? Try our fall snow globe craft or use our leaf identification flashcards to go on a leaf hunt! And don’t miss our All About Leaves printable pack for more leaf learning!

Easy Nature Art: Leaf Painting for Kids

To do this activity, you will need the following: (Affiliate links provided here for convenience. For details, see our Disclosure Policy.)

drawing paper
acrylic paint
an assortment of leaves (try to get ones that are large enough for your kids’ hands)

Just a quick note: This was the kids’ first time working with acrylic paint, so they were kind of surprised by how it moves on the paper. If your kids like tons of paint, definitely try tempera paint instead.

I asked everyone what colors they wanted to work with and we got started!

We put down two pieces of drawing paper – one as the “canvas” and another as the splat mat, plus paint palette. I just squeezed a bit of each color on the side.

This whole activity took maybe 15 minutes, but it was such a neat way to try art while using nature!

After we painted for a while, we started experimenting with printing.

And that was even easier, since all you have to do is spread enough paint on the bottom of your leaves and then press them down.

Lift them up slowly and you get a lovely leaf print!

Have even more leaf fun this fall with these posts!

Follow my Fall Activities for Kids board on Pinterest for even more fall ideas!

And get more fun learning ideas and crafts for kids when you sign up for our email newsletter! Subscribe using the widget below.

This post is part of Paint-A-Thon 2016 – a collection of more than 200 painting ideas for kids! Stop by to get tons of art inspiration for your kids!

Textured Sponge Painting Preschool Craft

August 9, 2013 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

Art is one my favorite subjects to teach in our homeschool lessons. But when you’re starting with young children, I’ve found it best to keep the projects as simple as possible. After all, they’re not quite ready to study post-modernism. 🙂

So we tried this easy textured sponge painting preschool craft with our kids and they absolutely loved it! It was a simple way to study color and painting while giving them a bit of sensory input at the same time.

Read on to see how to do this simple art project with your kids! And if you love this craft, try our list of super easy preschool crafts you can make in 10 minutes!

Textured Sponge Painting Preschool Craft

To do this craft, you’ll need the following:

To set up this craft, we cut a large kitchen sponge into four pieces and handed them out. (This step should be done by an adult.)

Then we added a bit more texture by having the kids crumple up their paper before beginning. We found some super old fingerpaint (I mean, from when Tigger was a toddler) and added a bit of water to thin it out and then it was time to get started!

When we asked Roo if he wanted me to sketch his design for him, he said “I want to make whatever I want to make.” Got it.

Tigger wanted to paint a picture of a tree, so I sketched it for her to give her a little guide since the sponge tips are so large.

Pooh wanted to paint a train and it ended up not going as well as he would have liked. But the experience of painting was so fun that he was all smiles anyway at the end. I think that’s what art should be like for kids!

Here’s everyone’s work. Mine is at top left, Tigger’s is at top right, Pooh’s train is bottom right, and Roo’s unique individualist expression is at bottom left.

To give the pictures a bit more flair, we sprinkled glitter and colored salt on them before they dried. A simple introduction to Impressionism, perhaps?

Have you tried this textured sponge painting preschool craft with your kids? Let me know how it went in the comments!

Like this post? Try these other ideas for preschoolers!

And get more ideas for preschool learning on my Learning for Little Ones Pinterest board!