Art of the Americas PDF

Art of the Americas is the seventh unit in the Middle Ages Arts course. This unit is about the sculpting, painting, weaving, storytelling, and other arts of the people of pre-colonial Americas.

This unit contains sections on:

• Trademarks of American Art
• American Art Forms
• Native American Legends

Layers of Learning is an activity-based program. The mentor chooses from among the activities in the unit to create mental hooks for learning. Some of the activities in this unit include:

• Make a feathered headdress with colorful papers
• Sculpt “jade” figures from green salt dough
• Make your own Nazca line art
• Paint a polychromatic Mayan style pot
• Craft your own rain stick
• Sew a beaded medicine bag
• Make a dream catcher
• Illustrate the legend of “How Coyote Stole Fire”
• And much more!

Each Layers of Learning Arts unit includes library lists of books, a family read-aloud suggestion, hands-on activities, printables and paper crafts, sidebars for extra learning, and tools to help you assess student’s progress and mastery. You can learn more about how Layers of Learning works in the Curriculum Guide or learn to teach art with the Arts Guidebook for mentors.

See Inside

Here is the inside view of a double page spread from Art of the Americas:

The curriculum is pick-and-choose, so you select which Explorations you would like to do out of the many choices.

Flexibility

This unit was written to be used for a month but contains plenty of content for many more weeks of learning if you choose. This is a pick-and-choose curriculum, meant to be cycled back to in the future when your child is older. As such, it intentionally includes far more material than you can possibly cover in a month.

Art of the Americas is also part of the overall Middle Ages Arts course, the second Year of the four year Layers of Learning Arts cycle. If you use the program in order, it will take you though the art in chronological order, tracking with the Layers of Learning History units. However, each unit stands alone and can be used independently of any other unit.

Printable Pack

This unit comes with a downloadable Printable Pack that includes all the student worksheets. The printables can be copied as many times as needed for your family or class.

You can download the Printable Pack from your receipt or from your account at Layers of Learning.

Here you see the cover and two of the printables from the Art of the Americas unit. This printable pack includes 26 pages. The Printable Pack is included in the purchase of the unit.

Extra Resources

This unit comes with extra weblinks and a YouTube video playlist on the Middle Ages Arts Resources page.