Last year our homeschool co-op decided to pay an art teacher. It was a fabulous year learning from this wonderful, seasoned teacher! This year she was offered a teaching position at a local university for the second semester, so we would not have our wonderful art teacher.

I had been Miss Marjie's helper for three semesters. I had seen how much some of the high school students really loved the class, and I love the richness that studying art brings to schooling. So naturally, I decided to plunge in and teach some art to the high school students for this last semester.

One of the projects we have done this semester is one of See the Light's Art Projects. I chose to use Horsin' Around. It's a chalk pastel project modeled after Edgar Degas and also includes an art history study of Degas and his style. I thought my students would really enjoy this project.

{Disclaimer: These are my affiliate links. They don't change your price, but I earn a small referral fee when someone purchases through my link. And See the Light is one of my sponsors for the Titus 2:1 Conference happening this weekend!}

The project is split up into 4 video lessons, each about 30 minutes long. We did one lesson per class time. Our class is one hour long, and it really worked out perfectly. We had just enough time to pause the video or rewind a bit and then continue watching.

This really was a perfect lesson for high schoolers! They learned some wonderful information about Edgar Degas, they learned about impressionism, and they learned how to use chalk pastels. Some of the Art Projects that we have done were a little simpler than I imagined for this high school class, but this one surprised me. In fact, it was pretty challenging for them!

If your homeschool co-op doesn't have an art teacher, Art Projects (or even Art Class) would be a perfect alternative. There are a few details to figure out how to make them work well in the group setting. Here are a few things that I found helpful:

A television with DVD player is the best way to watch the video, but you can make a laptop with good speakers work. The one difficulty with using the video is making sure that students can see the screen well and still see their work. We ended up needing to place the laptop so that the light from the window was not shining on it and then turning the lights off in the room. This made it a little to dim in the room to really see their pastel colors well, but it worked out okay. When we turned on the lights to examine their work, they were always pleasantly surprised. {grin}
The supplies are all listed for each step, but it's still helpful to preview the video before using it in class. There were some details in how supplies would be used that were helpful to know beforehand when using it with a group. For instance, we used kneaded erasers to lift some color off the project when needed. I have 8 students in class, and they all wanted to use the kneaded eraser at the same time. So I bought large erasers and cut them into 2 or 3 pieces so that we had more erasers to go around.
The quantity of supplies may differ from the list in the video– at least for ease of use. For instance, it says you need a box of 25 pastels. However, we had 8 students who all wanted to use the same shade of green at the same time. I had broken our pastels into 3 pieces, but it still wasn't enough. As you preview the video, think about these sort of logistical details.

My best suggestion is to remember to have fun!

HomeSchool High is sponsored by Apologia.

I hope you'll tell them a big "thank you"!

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Now it's your turn. What have you been doing this week with your high school teens?

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