Colonial Period Arts: A Family-Style Arts Program PDF

Course Overview

Colonial Period Arts is an art appreciation curriculum where kids do hands on projects and practice art while they learn about great artists and art movements from the Late Renaissance through the Neoclassical period. The art course utilizes printables, books, videos, and art projects. It was written so all ages and abilities can use it together for family-style learning.

Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, dance, and other art forms are all included.

What’s In This PDF Set?

Each Layers of Learning course includes nine units, one for each month of your school year.

1. Mannerism – This unit includes the late renaissance art of southern Europe and also the northern European art of the Netherlands during their golden age.
2. Baroque & Rococo – These two art movements were European and highly ornate as well as mostly secular, a departure from the Renaissance.
3. Reformation & Counter-Reformation – This unit focuses on the art of Europe during the upheaval of the Reformation period.
4. Mughal Arts – In this unit learn about the art in India during the reign of the Muslim Mughal Empire from miniatures to architecture.
5. Classical Music – This unit focuses on the classical musicians of Europe who took music to new heights of emption and complexity.
6. American Colonial Art – This is about the art of the colonial period in what is now the United States.
7. African Arts – This unit focuses on pre-colonial African art (Africa wasn’t heavily colonized until the 1880s).
8. Folk Art – This is about the local artists who make paintings, crafts, woven materials, signs, furniture, and other arts across the world.
9. Neoclassicism – This is about the art movement that took off during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic era, a return to Roman aesthetics.

A Layers of Learning Arts Lesson

Each Exploration in the units is written as a complete lesson plan. It will direct you to books to read, videos to watch, projects to craft, sketches and paintings to create, and discussions to have. The units are clear full of Explorations to choose from, and you won’t have time for them all. This is a pick-and-choose curriculum.

Besides the art lesson for the day, the units are lined with sidebars that direct you to discussions, books, famous people, interesting facts, writing ideas, and more.

You will also see a Library List at the beginning for a personalized reading list and a Show What You Know section at the end that will help you create assessments or tests based on your individual learning.

Reusable and for All Ages

These units books are for the mentor, not to hand to the student. They are supposed to be used repeatedly. Since this is a pick-and-choose curriculum, you do some of the experiments and explorations and save others for later on. If you follow the four-year cycle, you will progress through Art Beginnings, Middle Ages Arts, Colonial Period Arts, and Modern Art over the course of four years. Then you will cycle back to Art Beginnings in the fifth year when your kids are older and learning at a higher level. In all, you may use this book three times with your child.

The Arts units contain lessons ranging from drawing a simple picture to analyzing great art. There are plenty of concepts for little kids and plenty to challenge high schoolers. Most lessons are meant to be taught to many ages, from 6-year-olds clear up to seniors in high school.  Each age group gets the same Exploration and principles, but they learn on the level they are ready for. Books from your library and video from the YouTube playlists customize the learning for each age.

Extra Resources

YouTube playlists and links to helpful websites are all assembled and ready for you to access on the Colonial Period Arts Resources page.

If you are buying the PDF course and plan to print it, you may want a printable Colonial Period Arts PDF cover for your binder.

Printable Packs

Colonial Period Arts also includes printables for every unit. These are worksheets or paper crafts for the students. The Printable Packs are available as a digital PDF download and come with your purchase on your receipt.

Also Sold As Individual PDFs

The Colonial Period Arts course also comes as individual PDF units you can purchase one-by-one as you go. The individual PDFs are exactly the same content as the units that are included within the paperback or PDF Middle Ages Arts book. It’s like buying the course chapter by chapter in a digital format.