This is what we did this year for art and music appreciation: Ambleside Online's artist and composer studies. These are free Charlotte Mason artist and composer studies online, grouped by school year and term.
Ambleside Online has a rotation schedule for both artist and composer studies. Each school year is divided into three terms, with one artist and one composer studied in each term. For this school year, we studied the art of Duerer, Caravaggio and Delacroix. For composers, we listened to the music of Beethoven, Vivaldi and Chopin.
What we did...
For composer study, I would just find the week and composer on Ambleside Online's website and click on the next song in the list. If we were supposed to listen to Chopin's Nocturne in E-Flat, I would click the link (which leads to Youtube) and play the music for my student while he sketched or colored with markers. We listened to one piece of music each week.
For artist study, I did the same thing. I went onto Ambleside's website, found the term and artist and clicked on the next painting. I would usually magnify each painting and we would look at details like brushstrokes, how well the artist painted hands, how accurate the animals looked, etc. My son decided that Caravaggio wasn't very good at painting horses, so we discussed that and other things he noticed. We did an artist study maybe once a week.
Did we like AO's artist and composer studies?
YES!! My son particularly enjoyed the artist studies. Listening to Chopin and Vivaldi as he was sketching/drawing was also a very pleasant way to do art.
Ambleside Online's artist and composer studies are simple, free and an enjoyable way to cover art and music appreciation.
