Artistic Pursuits Review

Today I wanted to bring you an Artistic Pursuits review for grades K-3. Artistic Pursuits is an art curriculum which I first picked up a couple of years ago. It took a while before we actually got into it as I was originally planning to use it while we were living in a temporary apartment and building our house. I decided against doing any projects that could potentially damage the carpet in the rental, so we held off until the end of first grade to use it.

We have since made art a summer session subject since we school all year around. While we have small art projects here or there that are within other subjects, we don’t really focus on art now until May through the end of July. While we homeschool year ’round, I try to do fun, lighter subjects during the summer months and art definitely fits that definition.

Artistic Pursuits Review

Cost

So the first thing I will say about Artistic Pursuits is that it’s not a super cheap art curriculum. The books themselves are not too expensive, but the supplies are not cheap. If you are looking for a curriculum that just requires some crayons and some water colors, this is not the company for you. However, if you are looking for a program that allows your child to experiment with many art techniques with a bit of art history thrown in, this is exactly what you are looking for!

The first thing you need to do before you start this curriculum is to collect all of the supplies. Artistic Pursuits sells supply kits to go with their units. As a crafter, I actually already had some of the supplies needed so I chose to buy my supplies individually through Amazon. Keep in mind good supplies will last for a long time, so decide which items you are willing to skimp on and which ones to place quality over price.

Examples

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Here are two examples of the lessons in Artistic Pursuits. You will see they are not super long. Most of the art history portion of each lesson is only a page to a page and a half. There is a project to go with each lesson. Most of the projects are fairly simple to understand and teach and can take as short or as long as your child’s interest holds.

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Here are some of the projects Stephen made with this curricula.

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Conclusion

We have really enjoyed this curriculum. It’s variety of projects and techniques have kept my easily-bored son, very excited to see what the next lesson will bring. The projects are not difficult, easily understandable and are fun which is perfect for an introduction into a variety of art mediums. In addition the lessons are short which leaves plenty of time to get the actual project accomplished.

So here is the only bad news, for me at least. Since I originally purchased this curriculum they have changed the way it is structured. I have chosen to continue to use the version I originally purchased. It looks like the new version breaks the curriculum down into art history periods, which is great, but I want to finish the original series we purchased before changing it up.

I hope you have enjoyed this Artistic Pursuits review. I truly think it is a top notch homeschool art program with it’s variety of projects and art mediums. We’re soon to start our 2nd year of this program and I will be sure to report how it goes, but I’m expecting nothing less than lots of learning and lots of fun.

Thanks for reading!