Art Resources for Preschool, Kindergarten & 1st Grade
Teaching art in your homeschool can bring important enrichment into your child’s education. Dipping into paint, gluing, cutting – pretty much any type artistic craft or activity helps your child express themselves and develop their brains and their own emotions.
Art is often one of those subjects that homeschool mom know they want to do more of, but often hold back because they’re afraid of the mess or missing out on “more important” subjects.
On this page you’ll find tried and tested resources that help you bring art into your younger kid’s homeschool day.
1st things 1st: Invest in a Good Mess Mat!
The best thing I’ve ever added to our art supplies collection is a mess mat! This mat is heavy duty, easy to wipe off, and a-ok to cover with paint and glue drippings! Use this on your dining room table, a folding table – even take it outside.
We’ve gotten years of use out of our mess mat and I’ve considered buying a second one. It’s so nice to be able to spread out the mess mat and embrace the fun of painting. We also use our mess mat for science experiments.
Next, Get Some Art Trays & Smocks
Art trays make a great way to contain an activity. I have used our trays repeatedly over my years of homeschooling for all sorts of things. Use art trays to gather craft supplies and science experiment materials to neatly set them out for your kids.
Good art smocks or aprons are an investment you’ll want to make to keep your own sanity and help you say “yes” to art more often.
Create a space to store all your art supplies with a hook or box for your smocks
Now You’re Ready To Dive Into Some Art Projects.
But Do You Need A Homeschool Art Curriculum?
You don’t need an art curriculum for younger kids, but it might help.
There are art project ideas galore all around us. Yes, you can go down the Pinterest rabbit hole and start pinning all your favorite ideas to try some day. This is a great idea if you’re excited about art with your little ones and want to pick and choose your favorite art projects to try with them.
Just make sure you get organized with your art supplies and have them on hand so when you’re ready to begin a craft there’s nothing stopping you.
An approach I’ve used year after year has been to organize my art projects in a spreadsheet over the summer. Then I write a list of supplies and head to my dollar store. I store all the supplies in my art cabinet and then I know that we can do all the crafts on my list without missing anything.
My Favorite Grab & Go Art Curriculum For Little Kids
I really love the Abeka art books, especially for toddlers. They’re so easy to prep – just buy the items on the small supply list in the book. Then when it’s time for art simply pull out a page and your kiddo is ready to do their art! If you can’t find them via the links below on Amazon, you can purchase these directly from Abeka via this link. Note that these do have Christian material.
When You’re Ready For More…
Try some guided art projects from Deep Space Sparkle. This company is geared more towards school art teachers, but she’s got a huge page of guided art projects that we have sincerely loved doing.
Share Your Art Resources With The PK1Kids Community:
https://www.facebook.com/pk1kids/posts/5042396142492053
Arts & Crafts for PK1Kids Pinterest Board:
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