Review: Creating a Masterpiece

I may be married to a former graphic designer, but implementing art in homeschooling is still a challenge for us. That being said, I was very excited to try a product like the Monthly Plan from Creating a Masterpiece.

This program is a monthly subscription (you can also buy an annual pass) that allows anyone in your family unlimited access to over 144 videos and art projects.

We did numerous projects, but for the sake of this review, I want to focus on two of the projects we did.

The first was LESSONS IN WATERCOLOR: AFRICAN SUNSET. Here is a video I took of my three children (ages 5, 8, and 8) doing this lesson:

I took quite a few pictures during this lesson so that you can how this looked for our family. All of my children (who have VERY different likes and personalities) enjoyed every art project we did. They really got into them and had fun watching their masterpiece come alive. There is NO complaining when we did these art projects:

Isaac is my most serious artist. He always appears to not be having a good time (but really is!)

Abigail is currently our most "talented" artist. She is really showing signs that she might take after her Daddy in this area.

Sidge putting a few finishing touches on his water color project. He always does things like this with great eagerness and gusto. He is animated and shares his enjoyment.

Here's Isaac with his finished project.

Abigail putting the final touches on her watercolor picture.

You can tell from the video that Sharon Hofer is an incredibly sweet and knowledgable teacher (with over 15 years of teaching experience) She has a wonderful voice and was pleasant to listen to! She created Creating a Masterpiece because she wanted to extend the reach of her fine art school. Sharon was hoping to find a program that would teach technique but that would also equip each student to produce excellent results.

The program is designed to be done by children as young as 4 and 5, and that is definitely the case as my Abigail (who is 5.5) did very well paying attention and following along with Sharon. However, what I really loved was that each project was designed to be a masterpiece level of work. As Sharon said on her website: "I want to encourage them to take pride in their work and help them feel like a real artist, instead of doing simplistic crafts."

And she does just that. I wanted to take a moment to show another finished project that we did. This one was Lessons in Charcoal: Sailing Adventure. I have to admit that I was intimidated by this one, but I was so impressed with how well my very young children did at following the directions and completing their pictures. (Note that two of my children used brown charcoal.)

This picture really brings me joy. Sidge was SOOOOO proud of his work and truly felt like it was a masterpiece. This is SO fun to see from a child. I just loved how happy he was.

Art is always tough to put into homeschool. I do find that most of my attempts at art are more "craftsy" and don't necessarily give my children the feeling of accomplishment. But this program DOES. You can tell that they all felt PROUD of the work they did.

I have to be honest. At first glance, you might think this product is a little on the expensive side. However, I am a cheapskate, and I have to say I disagree. Especially if you have multiple children, the sky is truly the limit with how many things they can do and how much they have with these projects. Truly this is a simply wonderful product that you will find to be WELL WORTH what you might pay for it.

As always, feel free to email me directly at wkitsteiner@gmail.com if you would like to speak with me directly about this product.

You can check Creating a Masterpiece out on their website. You can also check them out on Facebook by clicking here.