How to Create a Home Art Center

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Do you long to create a Charlotte Mason homeschool for your children? Is it your secret hope that your kids will grow to be well versed in the arts? Do you want to simply add more art into your homeschool? I know I do.

When I first started homeschooling my days would go something like this: My kids and I would work, work, work, all day long on math or language arts. We would end up frustrated or exhausted by 3pm and then we would all be fried for the rest of the night. Not wanting to do anything until after dinner. We never seemed to be able to fit the arts into our schedule.

It is a small dream of mine, to let my children create freely in the afternoons or weekends and let their creative sides grow. I long for them to be able to conduct nature studies in our backyard. My desire is for them to really study the masters and then replicate their famous works. Truthfully, I hope that when their creative juices are flowing they know where to look and they find all of their supplies in an easily accessible place.

After our recent move, I was sorting and organizing our homeschooling supplies. I realized I had shoved a bunch of art supplies kind of haphazardly in some drawers in my dining room china cabinet. It occurred to me that if our things are not easily accessible, we will be less likely to use them. So, I got to work on organizing our supplies and I can’t wait to share my results with you!

Making time to fit homeschool art into your day shouldn’t be a chore! I suddenly saw that the china cabinet was the perfect place to create a home art center!!!

I have found having a home art center makes it so much easier to be spontaneous about art.

You can create a home art center, too.

Just follow these simple steps:

Buy or find a tray.
Find an empty drawer – preferably in a place that is easy to access for kids
Gather your art supplies (see below)
If needed purchase some new ones (also see below)

Helpful tips: Choose traditional watercolors and paints in tubes. Gather pastels, watercolor paint brushes, charcoal pencils and charcoal sticks, erasers, pencil sharpeners, graphite pencils and good quality colored pencils. Or buy an art kit.

Buy a plastic tray from Amazon, Ikea, Target, or Walmart that will easily fit your supplies. You can get a plastic one, like we have, or try this wooden one. Make sure you include a nice pad of acrylic paper, watercolor paper and a sketch pad.