Gettin' Schooled, Part 1: Arts in Homeschool Education
I was able to homeschool each of my daughters briefly during their middle school years in ways that accelerated their writing, knowledge of history, and taught them valuable life skills such as cooking and travel protocols. What many homeschooling families and communities already know is that it’s both easy and useful to integrate arts into education.
Several of my friends chose to home educate their children for the entirety of their school years with marked success, producing folks who went to college, learned traditional trades, joined the military, and became working artists, designers, and musicians.
With few exceptions, all of my friends whose children were successfully homeschooled already know how learning takes place all year, with a focus on everything being a learning experience, and using strategies common in special education which along with arts integration, creating a nimble educational space for all learning styles.
Home educators, a group that has grown since the pandemic lockdowns, are one powerful source of great ideas for using the arts for learning in innovative ways. As with many of my friends, black homeschooler participation has increased since the pandemic to five times the national average. One homeschool community in New Orleans, The Black School, takes as its central strategy for education, the integration of arts into the curriculum, essentially learning through the arts.
While studies are sparse on homeschooling education, It’s perhaps an unintentionally well kept secret that homeschooling the way many folks do it these days provide the well researched important elements of education, all the best parts of any child’s process of establishing a system for lifelong learning:
Small group and individualized learning
Caregiver interaction
Multisensory learning
Communal learning/each one teach one
Sharing resources with other learners
When combined with the unique benefits of having children engage with visual arts, music, dance, and poetry, the ways that homeschooling families integrate the arts into their curriculum offers ideas and strategies for achieving academic success as well as the social emotional learning so vital to education.
Some of these arts integration strategies which my homeschooling friends have found successful can be adapted for younger or older children who attend school to augment and accelerate their learning and prevent learning loss during the summer months or school breaks or lockdowns.
Songs for learning multiplication tables (perhaps one of the few things I made my oldest daughter learn by heart) including the series Multiplication Rock which can be accessed on YouTube. Grammar Rock works too! I learned grammar rules this way in high school!
Using theater performance for teaching and learning history: one friend enrolled her three children in a class that taught Shakespeare (and therefore history) through theater performances.
Visiting museums for teaching colors, shapes, history and art theory, and museum visiting protocol!
Dance/movement for teaching how the planets revolve around the sun: especially when you make costumes in the shape, colors, etc. of the planets, their moons, etc..
Poetry writing and performance for developing language skills and writing. This works well with homeschool groups of elementary-high school age children.
Pottery and ceramics for learning math and chemistry.
Batik dyeing for learning chemistry, Egyptian history, and geometry
These days, caregivers often choose homeschooling groups, a phenomenon which continues to grow. More learners and educators have access to resources available online. We can all learn from the arts integration homeschoolers do. Here are some links to get you started.
10 Ways to include art in your homeschool day
Arts Integration and Differentiated Instruction
How to integrate arts into a homeschool curriculum
Getting started with Arts education
How do homeschoolers approach creative arts learning
10 Reasons why Arts integration in schools is important
One thing that’s clear about learning generally, much pressure is placed on either teachers for public and private school students and on parents for homeschooled students. Organizations like YALA support families with the kinds of free arts integration activities that promote learning, social emotional development and joy for children from age 6 months to 18 years, as well as their caregivers and teachers. For parents with children in school who wish to level up their students' learning, arts integration is among the easiest and most fun ways!
Join YALA for events at local museums, libraries, and community spaces where teaching artists make learning fun for all!