Tailoring Your Lessons to Suit Your Child's Strengths and Passions

Most of my long time readers know that Grace is crazy about drawing. It is how she spend most if not all of her free time. Grace wants to be an artist when she grows up. At this point she doesn't really know what that will look like, maybe graphic arts, or illustrating or just selling her own stuff. I have talked many times before about Grace's aversion to all things academic. We have fought this since 2nd grade. I even asked her a question yesterday to ponder, "What would you study if left to your own devices?". If you could pick anything to study and run with it what would it be. She gave me a blank stare and said "nothing". She said she was fine with me assigning her things and just doing them for the sake of getting through it. To me that just seems like such a sad way of making your way through the educational years. I had already decided with her passion for art that one day a week we would only "do" art. Today was that day. We had a couple of hours free this morning before going to a friend's house this afternoon for some fellowship and food. In the above picture is a few of the items we are using for our art day. Drawing with Children and Keys to Drawing are two books I am using in combination with a review for Creek Edge Press that will be posting later this month. Also in the pile is Artistic Pursuits that I am reviewing for the TOS Review Crew and that will post in March. 

Next I came across some very interesting e-books available through School House Teachers for free if you purchase a subscription. Of course the one above simply screamed at me, "Hey look at me". Some of the materials in the e-book are too young for our needs but the artist segments about true life artists and how they came to this career are really great reads for someone like Grace. 

Here are a few samples of some of the sketches she has done with the above books. She gets very frustrated with realistic drawing. She has spent so many years in the realm of anime, manga, and cartooning that we are trying to spread her wings and challenge her in other areas of drawing. Even though we use a couple of the above products more that once a week, I will definitely continue to schedule a few hours of art each week at home to help fuel her passion. Of course this doesn't even include her anime club she attends once a month, a mixed media class and an art history class once a week.