Visual Manna Complete Art Curriculum

Visual Mann Programs, written by Sharon Jeffus, are more than just learning art basics. Tied in with this program is art appreciation, vocabulary skills, a bit of core subjects, and more! Her goal is “to provide educational materials for children to make them feel good about who they are. I want them to love learning and view it as an exciting discovery… All children can benefit from finding their place to shine in the arts and can feel good about who God created them to be.”

Preschool and Elementary Art Basics teaches art appreciation and implements concepts into fun, easy, and simple projects that young children will enjoy and learn from. This art curriculum contains 10 art lessons for kids, covering Center of Interest, Positive/Negative Space, Lines, Expressions, Shapes, Six Colors of the Color Wheel, Patterns, Eight Ways to Draw a Bird, Nine Ways to show Scale, and Ten Ways to Draw Structures.

Visual Manna’s Complete Art Curriculum is an insightful art program that both the teacher and students can learn from. It gives a broad overview of different types of art, concepts, materials, and techniques through a series of 45 lessons. Due to the broadness of this program, there isn't a lot of depth - rather, it's more of a wonderful introduction to the many facets of art. There is heavy emphasis on the use of recycled materials. The lesson narrative explains the new concepts being presented. Then, an art project is suggested for children in grades 1-6 and another for older children grades 7-12 (usually several ideas for each range). These have the students putting into immediate practice the concepts they've just learned.

The Art Through the Core package includes all the "Teaching... Through Art" books, which help teach core subjects through art. The package is available on CD (PDF format) or in a looseleaf printed bundle. The package includes: Teaching Science Through Art, Teaching American History Through Art, Teaching Social Studies Through Art, Teaching Math Through Art, Teaching English Through Art, Teaching History Through Art, and their newest release, Teaching Astronomy Through Art. Subjects are also available individually on our website. Please see the individual items for more details on each book. Please note that you will need Adobe Reader to use the CDs; it is available to download for free at www.adobe.com.

Art Adventures in Narnia features crafts and projects that highlight the characters from the Chronicles of Narnia series. In 56 pages, Sharon offers a variety of ways students can apply their own creativity to the subjects of Narnia, whether it be through pencil and paper, paint, clay, cardboard, or a craft project. Subjects examined are lions, heraldry, knights, armor, weapons, crowns, thrones, portraits, printing, rabbits, beavers, gargoyles, fauns, stags, trees, castles, birds, ancient writing, dragons, unicorns, and maps. Along the way, Sharon mixes in art concepts, including perspective, shading, using a grid, scale, and positive and negative space. Because the topics are chosen from the Narnia books, this is not a cohesive art program; rather, it's set up as a book you can wander through as you read through the Narnia books, choosing topics that suit your fancy.

Master Drawing covers shading, texture, proportion, perspective, and drawing people, buildings and more. Also included are lessons on using grids, rhythm and value, and drawing motion, still life, animals, landscapes, cartoons, and caricatures. As a special treat, a section that features many field sketches of birds by renowned bird artist David Plank is included in the animals section. Other very helpful lessons include using creativity and how to concentrate on what you are seeing as you draw - both important for the serious sketcher. Lessons are open-ended and easy to understand while covering all the basics, such as the face being five eyes wide, and how to find a vanishing point to draw accurate perspective drawings. This could be implemented with a group of budding artists, or for the older or more driven art student.

Drawing, Painting, & Sculpting Horses distills the process of horse-focused art into learnable steps. Heads, legs, tails, shading, etc. are all covered separately with space for practice and tips given on each. Practice is even done on the anatomically correct horse - drawing bones and muscles. Many helpful tips are given on art materials and on how to simplify some of the exercises for younger artists. Encouragement and biblical references are frequent throughout the book. As stated in the name, tips and lessons are not merely on how to draw horses, but also how to shade, paint, and sculpt horses.

Dragons, Dinosaurs, Knights, and Castles begins with a brief historical lesson on the dinosaur and the dragon. This book smoothly transitions to art lessons with strategically placed historical tidbits. Art techniques your child will learn include sculpting three-dimensional dinosaurs, basic shape and line drawings, shading, shadowing and textures, grid drawing, motions, color wheel, and perspective. 

What if you had a good friend, who happened to be a wonderful art teacher, come into your home and help you teach art? That's the flavor of Visual Manna. It incorporates art concepts, techniques, and appreciation all in one curriculum, uses a wide variety of media, and lets you teach all your children at the same time. The Jeffus' obviously not only understand art and how to teach it - they understand children as well. There's nothing dry or boring here. Even when presenting new concepts or instruction, the narration is captivating - filled with interesting tidbits drawn from science, history, or about people or events. Throughout the lessons, it's as though the author is conversing informally with you. There's an awful lot of "good stuff" packed into these 45 lessons - and so many extra ideas that you can use this curriculum and reuse it! Because of the breadth of concepts, materials and types of art here, there isn't a lot of depth - rather, it's more of a wonderful introduction to the many facets of art. Each of the 45 lessons begins with a materials list and a stated objective. There is heavy emphasis on use of recycled materials, and the authors devote a full page in the beginning to ideas for obtaining inexpensive or free supplies from local sources. The lesson narrative explains the new concepts being presented. Then, an art project is suggested for children in grades 1-6 and another for older children, grades 7-12 (usually several ideas for each range). These have the students putting into immediate practice the concepts they've just learned. (The lessons devoted to drawing people and faces in proportion are done particularly well, in a format for even younger children to use.) After every 5 lessons is a "test" to review what's been covered in that section. 31 different colored art prints of works by major artists are also included, mounted on pages with very short biographical sketches and a discussion of the art style on the reverse side. Most of these are correlated to topics in adjoining lessons. They are not part of the lessons, but more like "asides" scattered throughout the curriculum. A unit study is also included in this curriculum. Finally, a list of 55 additional ideas for art projects are included at the end. It sure looks to me like the Jeffus' could have written several volumes of curriculum with all this material! This year, authors plan to include a "complete art history time line" in this curriculum. In a nutshell, this curriculum is complete, "user-friendly," and has lots of variety. While you can use it for all ages, the presentation is decidedly geared toward the younger half of that range, since it's more of an introduction to art concepts and formats. This curriculum comes in two formats: perfectbound softcover with a PDF copy of the unit study on CD-ROM or entirely in PDF format on CD-ROM.