Reclaim Your Time with CC Art Lesson Plans
You Can Easily Teach Art Using the Classical Model of Education
Are you busy? Planning art projects that focus on the fundamentals (the grammar) of art and also align with the Classical Conversations Foundations Guide takes hours of time. However, there’s no need to spend your limited free time reinventing the wheel by writing art lesson plans. I want to give you my complete art lesson plans for your CC community so you can reclaim your time.
(Looking for the Challenge A Cartography resources?)
No one wants to spend their evenings and weekends writing lesson plans. We all want to just relax… maybe read a book, watch our kids play soccer or chat with friends… But how can you relax with all these art projects hanging over your head?
“What exactly are we going to do for art each week? How can I make this art project work for both 4-year-olds and 12-year-olds? How can we make sure we’re teaching some real art principles in such a short time block? What supplies should I purchase?
I get it, I’ve been a Classical Conversations SR, Director, and Foundations tutor myself, and plenty of my evenings and weekends have been anything BUT relaxing. However, your experience doesn’t have to be that way! I’ve created fun and easy art lesson plans and pulled together an organized, succinct shopping list just for you!
No need to re-invent the wheel– I’m sharing all my lesson plans with you here, so you can relax too!
You’ll find the answers to several Frequently Asked Questions near the bottom of this page.
(References to Classical Conversations do not constitute or imply endorsement by the company.)
Are you curious about what a Ridge Light Ranch art lesson plan looks like?
Download a sample art lesson plan here.
See What Others are Saying!
I absolutely LOVED the cycle 2 great artists set. SO helpful as a CC Foundations director. I loved how you have a few project options, based on age level. It was so helpful to just have everything we needed to cover in one spot!
Callie Smith
Thank you so much! These plans are a blessing to my community. One tutor said “these are amazing and like I hoped an art study could be!
Becca Nelson
Your Amazing Aritists material for Cycle 2 was wonderful! I printed the material, with the additional pictures, into a spiral bound book and used it for our Art lessons. The book was beautiful, had a custom cover made, it was easy to copy so my daughter could do lessons and then “color” on top of and trace the artists pictures herself. This was a treasure trove of quality collected materials! We’re looking forward to seeing your materials for Cycle 3!
Jeni Johnson
I loved the convenience of the Art lessons for last cycle, and I am SO excited that you will have lessons for Cycle 3! I will definitely be purchasing those!
Rachel Elliott
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
What ages are your lesson plans written for?
The lesson plans are designed for 4 to 12-year-olds, although I think older students and adults would enjoy them too. This is possible because every lesson plan includes options for scaling it up and down to fit the skill level and passion of your students because it’s not all about age.
Our CC community had the full 4-12 year old age range last year and it looks like we will again this year. Last year I gave my lesson plans to my tutors and then encouraged them to do what would work for their class. Often they chose to have two levels available and let each student choose. They’d say something like: “You get to choose if you want to start with a pre-drawn picture and focus on painting or draw your own picture to paint!” It seemed to work great with the 4 year olds and the 12 years.
Are these art lesson plans classical?
Yes. These art lesson plans are designed for the grammar level of art. They focus on learning about people, art terms and basic techniques. They include references to help you, the teacher, integrate them with other subjects as often as possible.
Are these art lesson plans “stick-in-the-sand” simple?
Yes, although I’ve found stick-in-the-sand means different things to different people.
In her 2012 Writer’s Circle article, “Stick in the Sand: The Place of Technology in Community,” Leigh Bortins uses it to mean that we don’t need expensive technology to teach our children. In the CC community it has also evolved to mean that education does not need to be complicated, so look for ways to make homeschooling simple and doable.
If you have the existing knowledge of art or you have the time and the passion to teach yourself about art, I’m confident that you are fully capable to teach art without formal lesson plans. In that case it may feel simpler to you to do it yourself and not mess with lesson plans. If, however, you don’t already have knowledge about art or don’t have both the time and the passion to teach yourself the grammar (fundamentals) of art, then my lesson plans are a great way to simplify the process of teaching art. You can use my lesson plans to learn alongside your students, with minimal preparation on your part.
Does my friend need to buy her own copy or can I share these lesson plans with her?
She probably needs to buy her own copy, but please read over the FAQs about our using our products and the Multi-user permissions. You can also read our full Terms of Use.
This is also true for free downloads. Please DO share links to our website with your friends so they can download their own freebies. The traffic to our website helps our business!
Whether you’re a Director at a homeschool community, a mom teaching at home, or a teacher in a more traditional school, we trying hard to create licenses that work for you. If it seems like the choices available won’t work for you, please reach out and let us know. Hopefully, we’ll be able to make something work!
Thank you so much for helping me protect my copyright on these lesson plans!
Why don’t you use “Discovering Great Artists” by Kohl and Solga?
I don’t have anything against the book, Discovering Great Artists. If you’re look for a book of fun crafts, it’s great. However, it doesn’t seem to use the classical model of education and it doesn’t feel like an art curriculum. Don’t get me wrong, I love crafts and I have enjoyed doing some of the crafts in that book! However, I want more for the short thirty-minute time slot we have for art in our CC community. I want to use what I know about the classical model to give our students a strong foundation in drawing and painting. I want them to learn interesting information about the world’s great artists integrated with other subjects, I want to introduce them to the major movements in art history, learn some basic art vocabulary, and work on projects that reinforce these concepts. I’m so glad CC gives directors a lot of flexibility in this area so we can make the most of our fine arts time.