Ancient Art and the Orchestra is a Charlotte Mason style art and music appreciation curriculum for the homeschool middle grades.
Ancient Art and the Orchestra, A Homeschool Review
This year my 5th and 8th grader are studying Ancient History, including Egypt, Greece and Rome. As an accompaniment to our homeschool studies and an integral part of our Morning Basket time, we are working through the You ARE An ARTiST Ancient Art and the Orchestra music and art plans for homeschool.
It’s a full year of homechool music and art appreciation beginning with prehistoric art, a look at how the orchestra works, and also includes a wonderful overview of some of the world’s most famous composers – Vivaldi and Prokfiev to name just a few.
In a nutshell, the homeschool art and music study is divided like this:
- Prehistoric Art
- Ancient Egyptian Art
- Ancient Greek Art
- Ancient Roman Art
- Native American Art
- Instruments of the Orchestra
- Overview of Classical Composers from Vivaldi to Prokofiev
The Ancient Art & the Orchestra study is part of ARE An ARTiST Fine Arts Logic Stage Plans geared for 5th through 8th grade, so perfect for my two. Here’s a little info from Barb regarding the Logic Stage Plans:
Starting with Prehistoric Art and ending with 20th Century Art, logic stage plans introduce students to the instruments of the orchestra, artists and composers in chronological order, and art skills in drawing, water coloring, and working with polymer clay. Depending on which option you choose in art, these objectives will be covered in varying degrees. Use all four grades and your student will get a complete picture of art and music history.
Barb McCoy
Ancient Art and the Orchestra for Homeschool
I love that these plans are incredibly flexible in their offerings and choices throughout the complete study.
We alternate between learning about composers, instruments of the orchestra and listening to famous symphonic works that are already pretty familiar to my gang, but still enjoyed and discussed with much enthusiasm after each listen.
On a different day we will read about a particular work of ancient art, look at artifacts online or watch a video showcasing particular works that were discovered from ancient times.
Special Note: Notebooking pages are included as part of the study which makes it nice if you enjoy using notebooking in your homeschool.
There is a short booklist as part of this great study including, The Story of the Orchestra
by Robert Levine with an accompanying audio CD.
For the art portion, Barb suggests using the Susie Hodges Prehistoric Art
and Ancient Greek Art. There are also numerous links included in the study to view ancient works within the context of the time period. So far, we have enjoyed all the history and views of Stonehenge and of many different cave paintings.
We did some fun “cave painting style” art to go along with our lesson this afternoon except instead of painting we decided to use our new chalk pastels that we’ve been having fun with lately. We chose to emulate, or rather, try and recreate the Cave Art of Lascaux.
Our Ancient Art Cave Renditions:
We crumpled up some torn apart paper grocery bags and then smoothed them back out again to create the bumpy wall effect, then set to work with our chalk pastels. Elijah’s masterpiece is on the right, mine on the left. It was harder than we expected to make a replica even remotely close to the beautiful ancient art, but we had fun trying nonetheless 😉
Another closer look:
We really loved this project and will probably create some more before we finish out these awesome lessons for Ancient Art and the Orchestra. Be sure to drop by You ARE An ARTiST to find an art plan that will be just right for your family. Happy creating!
More You ARE An ARTiST Homeschool Reviews
- Unit Studies for Ancient Art and the Orchestra: Elementary Through High School by Maureen Spell
- You ARE An ARTiST Fine Arts Plans for Art and Music Appreciation by Tricia Hodges
- You ARE An ARTiST Fine Arts Curriculum Review by Kristen
- Everything You Need to Know About You ARE an ARTiST Clubhouse by Shawna
Review by Meredith, updated by Heidi January 2022
Heidi Ciravola is mom to three kids who were all homeschooled. Two have graduated college and one is finishing homeschooling high school. She spends much of her time navigating the high school waters (from electives to college prep) and reviewing homeschool curriculum for all ages. You can find her writing about these things as well as her love of books and homeschool life in general over at Starts At Eight.
My challenge is my girls just don’t seem to be interested in anything I suggest. My oldest can draw just by looking at the pictures so she thinks she doesn’t need to learn anything about art. And forget teaching art history!
Yes, I get that Stacey, my approach here is to just spread great works of art (maybe in a calendar format) around different parts of the house and casually remark about them from time to time. Also, putting a slide show on the family computer where it is visible to all who are passing by might be a way to sneak in the visuals at least 🙂 Just some thoughts!
Thank you so much for the review. I was looking for something like this for my 7 & 9 year olds….
You are so welcome Erica, I hope it has some useful information for you! We have enjoyed Barb’s lessons for years, they are always engaging and I learn something new everytime 🙂
My challenge is time- how do we fit it in? I love that this curriculum integrates fine art with history, so it makes it easier to fit it art with all that we’re doing.
Anna, I include our art and music studies during our Morning Basket time, which our family has been doing for many years. It’s a wonderful way to incorporate some great study and discussion in a relaxed way. Also if we want to do an actual project, like the cave paintings, we’ll either do that after lunch or sometimes we end up having a whole morning of art time, which is a win in my books 😉 Try to let it happen organically and not stress about how much time it takes! This has become one of my favorite parts of homeschooling 🙂
Just getting out all of the supplies and cleaning up on a day I am tired!
Haha, Jess, I totally get you 🙂 I struggled with this for years when I had littles, now it’s not so bad with the older kids, they can do all the clean-up, or most of it themselves! Start small and work up to your “mess” comfort zone. I find it really makes a difference if I do the project right along with them 🙂
I think my challenge in keeping up with art is just finding the time. My boys and I all love doing art but it often gets pushed aside in the busyness of the day. We are using Harmony fine arts for the first time this year and it is really easy to implement. I have had the Drawing for Children book for years and never got around to using it but this year we are and I have already seen an improvement in their drawing. We also love the picture studies and listening to the composers. This curriculum has definitely simplified art for us!
Excellent Amie, I’m so glad you are finding them easy to use and that it’s helped to simplify your art time. Time is always running away from us too, so it’s nice when it all works out 🙂
My challenge is just being overwhelmed with the basics of reading, writing and math – too many kids and one mom – This review has reminded me how to appeal to my daughter though,,,,,, who needs more crafts and artsy ,,,,,
Yes, I get that Elizabeth – it can be extremely challenging, especially if they are very little – but you can file this away for when they are a bit bigger 😉 Another tip that you could maybe try is saving the art projects for naptime – this worked for us for the years when mine were too little to be involved without serious supervison LOL!
My challenge is fitting it in and having the energy for it. I need something easy.
Yes, my sentiments exactly Laurie! This is definitely easy, and you can tweak it to fit your family’s needs which is nice 🙂
Probably my greatest challenge is time. It’s hard to find the time to do art, partially because of a connected challenge–the preparation and mess!
Yes, there’s always some form of mess with art projects. It’s hard to get passed that hurdle, but when you do, it’ll be quite freeing 😉 It took me about 10 years to get there LOL!!