Global Art

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Gryphon House is a book publishing great site I recently discovered. They have tons of wonderful educational books for homeschoolers and teachers. They currently have more than 200 educational books & are continuing to add to that. The company has been around since the 1970’s and publishes some very high-quality materials.

I feel so lucky to have received a copy of Global Art: Activities, Projects, and Inventions from Around the World by MaryAnne F. Kohl & Jean Potter to review for our homeschool! I have a couple other art books by MaryAnne Kohl and really like them a lot. This book has actually been on my wishlist for a long time.

What I love about this book is that it is not only fun, but the projects are all educational as well. The projects are inspired by art from around the world. They are organized by continent and there are tons of project ideas for each continent. If you are studying Africa in geography and want a craft or project to go along with what you are learning, you can turn to the pages on Africa and make some wonderful and simple projects to help you r kids learn more about that country and their culture.

Each page has “Did You Know?” facts about the place as well. So it is teaching all kinds of things as you play with art! Some of the projects even have wonderful book recommendations to extend the activity even more.

There are all kids of different projects using various art mediums and styles: collages, painting, drawing, printing, building, sculpting, nature, and more. Each project lists materials and step-by-step instructions and sketches of the project making it so easy to do with your kids. The supplies are mostly easy to acquire or are likely things you already have on hand.

We are taking a summer break from school right now and only doing a few things here and there to keep our minds going. So we are not studying geography at this time, but when we start it back up, I will use this as a reference regularly to get ideas for our studies. I let my kids browse and choose activities that interested them for us to work on the past few weeks. We have been having fun creating together!

My son’s first choice was painting rocks to make scarab beetles. This is a craft from Egypt.

My daughter was excited about making the Diwali Alpanas, an Indian traditional art project. It typically uses colored sand, which we didn’t have. I improvised a bit and did it with crushed sidewalk chalk (Which we have in abundance!) The kids (& I) had so much fun making this one!

I loved my kids methods of crushing the chalk. One used a rolling pin, the other just rode his bike back and forth over it!

To make this project, you just use a large sheet of paper and cut it like a snowflake to have various stencil cuts. Then you lay it on the ground- I taped it with masking tape around the edges to secure it.

Then fill the holes with your colored sand or chalk to make the picture & remove the paper. You can keep using the stencil and color a huge area if you want!

This book sells for $16.95. It has 190 pages and is for Pre-K – 5th grade. To see more reviews on this and another title, The Homegrown Preschooler from Gryphon House Publisher click below.