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This post contains affiliate links. I was given Beautiful Feet Books Art Appreciation for this review and I was compensated for my time in writing the review. As part of the review process, I was not required to give a positive review. Thanks for your support!
When it comes to homeschooling a creative teen, we can be at a loss of how to prepare them for an art and design school. This is especially true when you are not a creative person yourself.
It’s also tricky to homeschool a teen while homeschooling younger siblings at the same time.
Beautiful Feet Art Appreciation curriculum is the perfect blend of family friendly and college prep ready.
When I was a senior in a public high school, I took a semester of humanities. As a science person, who took multiple years of chemistry and biology, along with extra foreign languages, the semester to focus on arts and humanities was a welcome diversion.
What I didn’t know is how much those concepts, ideas, and art pieces would stay with me to this day.
And since I was a biological sciences major steeped in loads of science and math in college, I’m so glad I had that semester in high school!
So, what are the benefits of studying art appreciation, even if you’ve done it before, and especially if you are homeschooling a creative teen?
Now that you’re convinced to take on Art Appreciation in the high school years, let’s talk about why Beautiful Feet’s Art Appreciation curriculum is special.
Let’s get to some nuts and bolts about the Beautiful Feet Art Appreciation curriculum. Here’s what comes with your order:
When it was time to approach the modern era of art, our youngest, who is a computer programmer and musician, made the connection between Mondrian color box paintings and the programming language named after Piet Mondrian.
Piet is a stack-based esoteric programming language where the programs look like abstract paintings. It uses 20 colors that vary in cycles using different lightness and hue cycles.
Connection made.
You never know when they will happen.
Rebecca is a huge fan of Albrecht Duhrer’s line work and takes inspiration from his detailed pieces.
You may know that our daughter is a creative soul who wanted to attend an Ivy League design program from early in high school.
We worked hard to allow her the freedom to be creative and to allow her to grow as an artist.
Do you have a creative teen who is interested in applying to art & design school? Check out How to Apply to Art & Design School. You’ll find out how to count this art appreciation curriculum for a fine art credit and you’ll learn so much more about how to encourage your creative teens, along with successful admission to art school.
Some details from Rebecca’s print made from the designs she etched into the copper sheet. Duhrer continues to be an art muser for her.
Rebecca went to Cornell University to study fashion design and completed her degree in 2022. She has a B.S. in Fashion Design with a minor in art.
As she perused the art prints in Beautiful Feet’s Art Appreciation card set, she pulled out the Albrect Durher print and another connection was born.
His line work is an inspiration to her and the art she does now, reflects this.
A view of the whole piece with a proud artis displaying it. She really enjoyed etching in the copper and would like to do it again someday.
How you choose to incorporate art into your teen’s creativity in their schooling will directly impact their talent formation, their design philosophy, and the body of work for their portfolio.
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This round up is about the best Instagram accounts to follow for joyful learning.
Over the years, as I’ve mentored parents of teens, I’ve often made suggestions of Instagram accounts that bring together social media time and learning.
Despite all the caution about teens and social media, there are some gem account out there that are definitely worth following.
Here’s my list.
You may want to check out these accounts before suggesting them to your teens to make sure the content is what you’d like your teen to engage with. Largely speaking, these are excellent accounts, but they aren’t perfect. Thanks!
Here is how you can support these amazing accounts:
The National Park Service account is both hilarious and informative!
You and your teens will learn facts about animals, plants, and historic figures all related to our national parks.
This account is a witty, fun account that (shockingly) shares word meanings in a relevant way. They often play off of popular culture references and they banter with other accounts.
Remember print encyclopedias? Brittanica is a name that’s been around a long time. In the age of information, encyclopedia sites are still around and still informative and the best part is, they keep us up to date.
This account shares facts, often in a carousel of graphics and sometimes a video. Plus, they love to cross post with Merriam Webster.
This account has been around since the beginning of our homeschooling days, though its had a few owners in its time. I even remember Barb having to change the name from Green Hour to Outdoor Hour Challenge since the Green Hour had been taken by a government agency.
Even though, I haven’t seen any material with that name in the wild.
Weird.
This account and its contents are dedicated to the idea of nature journaling from Charlotte Mason, our favorite 19th century educator.
The challenges come from The Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Comstock. If you follow Homeschool Nature Study, you can find printables and all sorts of support for learning about the world around you.
This account is hilarious! The start of the show is the art, of course, but not far behind is the older woman who uses Gen Z vocabulary to talk about pieces in the museum.
Her commitment to the vibe is impressive! Plus, your teen will learn a lot.
This guy is pretty quirky!
Each post is a history of a word, a phrase, an idiom, or a metaphor and he takes you through the entomology of the word or phrase.
This is a fun account if you have world lovers or you just want your teens to be informed on various words and phrases commonly used. Often we’ve never thought of where that saying came from. This account will answer the question and he takes requests if you comment!
This picture is a shameless plug for my love of fountain pens. These tools make even the teen who hates to write, write beautifully. You just can’t help it! Also, read the post to find out more!
This is a fantastic account for art fans! On his YouTube Channel, Danny Gregory has free Draw with Me sessions weekly, and if you want more, he has a membership as well.
This account has wonderful videos and if you are a nature fan, this one’s for you. He specializes in owls, but he also shares other wildlife that he encounters like lions on safari.
What can we say about the Library of Congress? It’s houses documents and information and books since the founding of our nation. You’ll always come away with facts and interesting stories when you follow this account.
Rebecca’s vintage inspired Civil War era dress from her high school design collection
The History Chicks is a podcast hosted by two women. Their tag line reads: Beckett Graham and Susan Vollenweider: Two women. Half the population. Several thousand years of history. About an hour.
You can keep up with them via Instagram, but the real deal is the podcast which you can launch from their website. The site has an index of all the women they’ve discussed organized by alphabetical order.
Now that you’ve gotten a glimpse of these fun Instagram accounts, you can learn more and engage.
Enjoy these accounts and tell me what you think!
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This is is by no means exhaustive, but it will give you a place to start. Let’s learn about these women and their contributions to science while learning about their science.
If you haven’t signed up to get your free STEM tasks cards, then sign up at the bottom of this post and download them!
My guess is you can think of at least one or two women famous for their contributions to (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) STEM fields.
But I’m also guessing you could use some help with this, so here’s my list of famous women that you can study with your teens.
Learn about these women and their science!
Art & Nature Study with Beatrix Potter– one of my most popular posts of all time! This is a study my daughter and I did while she was in high school. Lots of resources here along with some activities.
Microscopic Marvels: Explorations in Historical & Modern Microscopy– in this self paced lab science course, you’ll have the chance to learn about the contributions of women in STEM as we learn about scientists throughout the course.
Women in STEM! More than 60 Scientists & Engineers for Women’s History Month– from sciencebuddies.org where you’ll find a list of women and their contributions, plus links to related activities.
Girls & Women in STEM from the Smithsonian Science Education Center– this site has labs and activities of all kinds, so I encourage you to browse the site beyond this link which is to some science activities developed by women in STEM and they are suitable for all grades through high school.
Famous Women in Science & Art– from Little Bins for Little Hands. You’ll find a variety of activities and challenges for roughly 10 women in STEM along with information pages about each of the women.
STEM Activities to Celebrate Women’s History Month– you’ll find a list of successful women scientists, engineers, computer programmers, and mathematicians to study and take a look at their body of work.
This is one of our favorite ways to teach science, even for this science educator! Our youngest is a huge math and science student and preferred to learn this way.
How to Teach Science through the Lives of Scientists– this is a popular post and my go to for sharing how we teach science through the people who did the big science.
The Benefits of Teaching High School STEM through Storytelling– this post tells the story! ha! Learn more about how we used books to teach science concepts.
The Big List of Awesome Living Books for Homeschooling Science– the is a huge book list with books relating to every discipline of STEM.
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Now, you might be thinking how your teen couldn’t possibly add anything to their schedule.
Trust me. By the time you finish reading this post, you’ll feel confident with incorporating relevant books into your teen’s math studies.
Is there really such a thing as an inspiring math book?
To some, it might seem like an oxymoron.
But, yes, there are books about math and the people behind the math that can inspiring your teens. In fact, I’d say those teens who are most discouraged by math, may benefit the most from an inspiring math book.
These aren’t textbooks. Rather, they are books written by someone who is an expert in their field with the purpose of igniting interest in the average person.
Let’s have a look at using math “trade” books to add a new perspective on high school math.
So, what’s the big deal?
Why spend time with books about math instead of just doing math?
Let’s talk about it:
You can choose to implement this strategy into your teen’s math in a number of ways. I’ll share a few here:
Pro Tip: If your teen is neurodiverse, they might enjoy seeing themselves in the person or people they are reading about. Often people who did extraordinary work were extraordinary people and gifted/intense teens love to see the positive side of being who they are.
It’s time for the part you’ve been waiting for.
The big book list!
I work with families everyday who have teens who struggle with math.
They might have dyscalculia,
poor working memory,
slow processing speed,
or any other learning difference that affects the ability to do math.
Here’s a list of books for a younger student that might be right up your teen’s alley.
This post wouldn’t be complete without a word about my Kindles.
I have long championed the Amazon Kindle collection of devices!
Kindles are economical, easy to use, workhorses that I believe are essential to homeschooling families.
Kindles are also lightening fast.
When boredom creeps up and you need to keep your teen engaged, you can make the decision and 20 seconds later hand over a Kindle with a new book on it.
Piece of cake!
I once wrote a treatise on 6 Awesome Things You Need to Know to be a Kindle Pro.
It’s probably time for an update, given Amazon’s newest devices.
Sure, iPads and other tablets are useful tools, but there’s nothing like a Kindle for accessing the Amazon ecosystem (think: Kindle books and Audible!).
Here are my current favorites:
Pro tip: One of the chief complaints about the Kindle Fire tablets is that your apps are limited to what Amazon offers. However, you can “sideload” the Google Play Store onto your Fire tablets and access all the apps you love on your other Android devices.
If you try out one of these titles or you have another to share. Leave a comment! I’d love to read it!
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Electives sometimes throw us for a loop!
What counts as an elective?
How to we design one?
How many electives does my teen need?
Let’s talk about it!
In fact, if you are like us, they are the anchor of your homeschool! Though, that’s not a requirement to design electives well.
A few things to know about electives:
So, even if your state does not require electives, they are an integral component of your teen’s high school education. Use them wisely!
So, how do you work this type of magic into your homeschool high school?
Here’s my list:
Get your hands on this tool that allows you to create a custom, professional transcript for college admission. There are two ways to get it and one of them includes my help!
You’ll get weekly tips and ideas to help you with homeschooling your out of the box teen.
Get hands on help with planning the high school years and watch your teen thrive on their way to whatever’s next!
There’s plenty to think about when it comes to facilitating the high school years with your homeschooled teen.
After all, they have ideas of where they want their life to go and it’s our job to help them to make it happen.
These posts will help you with a four year homeschooling high school plan and you’ll find some of our favorite resources too.
Electives are one of the best ways for your teen to showcase what’s important to them and gives them an idea for what’s to come when they continue their education.
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After all, we want our teens to become effective written communicators and that comes with viewing yourself as a writer, not just a doer of homework.
Enjoy some of our favorite books that will lead your teen to more authentic writing!
To be honest, I’m not much of a journal keeper in the traditional sense, although I do enjoy writing in my ink journal (any fountain pen lovers out there?) and I have success with keeping a Bullet Journal and a nature journal. The Bullet Journal Method focuses on intention, priorities, and reflection. I highly recommend it if you are overwhelmed.
However, these books are so much fun and they inspire me to try new things with my journaling. My teens loved them and I think yours will too!
18 word and writing exercises for all ages, perfect for a writer’s workshop format
This collection of books provides excellent assignments for a writer’s workshop.
Especially your out of the box teens!
I am all about mentoring moms of out of the box, sick, and neurodiverse teens. Let me help you to change your mindset on working with struggling teens!
$37.50/month
$20.00/month
Six Week Writer’s Workshop– free and ready for starting immediately once you “purchase” for free though my shop!
How to Incorporate Fun Writing During the Summer– the way to be a better writer is to write! Check out these fun summer ideas.
How to Host a Summer Writer’s Workshop– You can piece together your own writer’s workshop and you’ll these books in action in this post.
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Disclaimer: I was given a copy of the two book series, Discovering Life’s Story and compensated for my time in writing this review. All opinions are my own and I was not required to give a positive review. This post contains affiliate links. Thanks for your support!
In fact, our youngest has been taught STEM through story for just about all of his schooling. He graduates next week from our homeschool and is headed for more self-education in this realm. The stories of the people along the way inspired him and helped him to learn the mathematical and scientific knowledge he craves.
So, let’s talk about what the looks like and I can’t wait to share some amazing new books that are perfect for the job!
The first question you might be asking is how do I know what makes a good story book for teaching science?
Here are a few things I look for:
So, how does using storytelling in STEM instruction, even in high school, benefit your teens?
I just love it when a great author adds to their repertoire of good books!
Joyce Hakim has written several good non-fiction series for students. You might be familiar with The History of US which is all United States History from landing on North American soil to more modern times.
She also wrote The Story of Science in three volumes. I love this series too!
Discovering Life’s Story is a two book series that investigates life science from ancient to modern times.
The first volume, titled, Biology’s Beginnings, tells the story of ancient to modern people discovering the science of life.
The second volume is called, The Evolution of an Idea, and it begins with the Age of Enlightenment.
In natural science, the elements of truth ought to be confirmed by observation- Carl Linnaeus
This book focuses on how the collective mindset on scientific begins to change.
Confession: as a biologist, Linnaeus and his system of classification is one of my all time favorite topics to this day!
Shouldn’t we be using text books?
Of course, high school science textbooks are full of good information and they lay a sort of foundation for the content in any science course.
But, if you want to learn more about how all of this was discovered/learned then finding a good book on the topic is a great thing to do. It’s like going behind the scenes of the facts and getting a peek at what was happening at the time and the context in which the discoveries were made.
It’s worth the effort to add meaning with storytelling to your high school STEM courses.
We’ve been teaching and learning science with storytelling for a long time.
In fact, that’s how our youngest student learned best even all the way through high school.
Here’s a look at some ways we’ve done that and what we’ve used.
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I received the advanced levels of Matica Quest as part of a review and I was compensated for my time in writing it. All opinions are my own and I was not required to write a positive review. You can be confident that I only choose products that I think you will resonate with. Thanks for your supp0rt!
Sometimes our students feel stuck. That’s when motivation is at an all time low and making progress is extra difficult.
For sure, our out of the box teens can feel this way because they are trying to succeed in a world not built for their quirks.
Matica Quest from Optimal Math is an engaging, intuitive app that allows you to practice math operations quickly.
Matica Quest is a mobile app for both Android and Apple that allows your kids to practice basic math operations plus exponents and negative numbers. So, let’s hear the facts:
Since my focus is on the high school years, you might be asking why I chose to review this product.
That is a fair question!
Let me answer it:
So, what can you hope to gain by having your teen play the Matica Quest Map?
Let me count the ways for you!
What I’d love to see in the future is more higher math. How about some algebraic equations?
Enjoy this video as a sample of how the game works and a look at its contents before you try it on your own.
Optimal Math which created Matica Quest is generously giving way five codes to purchase the additional levels for free!
If you’d like to win a code, just be one of the first five people to comment on this post. Tell me the thing you struggle with most as you teach high school math!
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We are a big gaming family. I mean we are HUGE gamers!
We play games everyday. Everyone in our family has a different game we call our favorites. Many of us can stick in for long strategy games and some of us can’t.
One of our young adults adores the fast paced games. He thrives with the quick moves and short duration of sorts of games. So, let’s talk about some of those games and why they are so beneficial to people with ADHD.
This list of fast paced games focuses on quick recognition and movement. You have to be ON it, to get good results and sometimes you just need to play a bit before you can get good at it.
Do you have any of these games?
By using this ADHD brain break accommodation in our homeschool high schools, we are modeling ways to work around our challenges.
These games aren’t card games, but they are games played quickly.
Do you play any of them?
The games in this category are not as fast paced, but they aren’t slow games.
The topic on fast paced games would not be complete without talking about video games.
Video games are super popular with kids and teens and the nemesis of many moms, especially homeschooling moms.
So, why would I recommend video game brain breaks?
Because video games provide instant feedback! They give our teens an instant result, so it’s a HUGE dopamine booster. ADHD brains have lower levels of dopamine. That’s why stimulant medication is helpful to ADHD brains. Video games boost dopamine levels. So, instead of fighting about video game time and when it will be, use it as a short term reward for doing the things on their list for the day.
If your teen doesn’t want to stop playing, then you can work in another strategy such as not offering the time during the school day or modifying the idea so that it has time constraints.
Over on Instagram, I shared 50 ADHD Accommodations for High School, and you can get over 30 of them plus accommodations that were never published and are only available inside this eBook.
Once you sign up, you’ll get instant access to the eBook full of accommodations, not only for ADHD brains, but for any out of the box or neurodiverse thinkers.
After that, you’ll get weekly ideas an encouragement for homeschooling high school with out of the box teens. That’s my specialty!
One of the best ways to immerse yourself in finding ways to work with your out of the box teens is through Homeschooling High School by Design Membership.
Inside membership we have live calls twice a month where I teach on a topic related to homeschooling high schoolers who have challenges of any kind, whether they are sick or their brains work differently. Once a month we meet together for moms who need extra support to teach and parent their teens.
We have a great group of moms and everyone leaves encouraged and ready to tackle another day!
There are two options for membership and you can choose them based on the experience you would like and your budget.
Click the graphic below to learn more about our membership community.
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Note: We did this particular experiment to answer a simple question in 2008 when our kids were 9, 7, 5, and 2. The originals posts here on the blog are from 2008 as well. So, although this was before high school, it was legit stuff and a great example creating a fair test experiment for any high school science course. Also, the original post pictures did not survive all of my website transitions and upgrades, so I improvised by taking pictures of the originals in my scrapbook. So, bear with me and let’s get to it!
When they can think for themselves, make connections between disparate bits of information, observe with interest, ask their own questions and unashamedly follow an interest in any direction, they are in league with some of the greatest scientists in history. -Laura Grace Weldon, Free Range Learning
Back in my homeschool convention speaking days, I used to do a talk on doing science in your homeschool. So many time I hear that moms “don’t get to the science”. It’s hard when you don’t particularly like science and the lessons/materials don’t feel accessible. In other words, it takes a lot more energy to pull that off.
We often think we have to have all the ducks in a row before we can start anything and there’s so much that can distract us from wrangling those ducks together so you can do whatever it is you are collecting ducks for.
In it’s most distilled form, science is about answering questions. Answering questions doesn’t feel as ominous and big.
I jump on the things my kids ask that could be turned into an experiment. It doesn’t take much. All you need is the question they are trying to answer and some time to get things going. In short, when they ask a question we don’t know the answer to, we find out. We even do this when we know the answer and we’ll help them to find out.
We recently ordered seven types of gourmet-ish popcorn (mainly because Alton Brown of Good Eats convinced Dan it was the best thing to do for popcorn!) and we’ve been saying that we need to do a taste test each time we try out a new kind.
When I found out that today was National Popcorn Day, I knew today would be the pop off! We talked to the kids about how to test the popcorn types fairly.
The kids are very excited. I’m off to make data charts and we will be sure to report back in later on after the official event. Can you tell these are children of an engineer and science teacher? Nah….
Editor’s Note: Now that all of these kids are adults, only one is looking for a career in a STEM field. However, the other three are science literate and take a very scientific approach to their technical writing, design work, and history studies.
Deciding on the independent and dependent variables is the hallmark of a fair test or a procedure that follows the scientific method. In this case, the kids knew that if we were testing for the best popcorn that all the other variables needed to stay the same and the only thing that would change would be the type of popcorn.
That way, those other things like butter, salt, and oil would not affect the results.
After deciding on the variables, we got to work with the kids.
Once the data was collected, it was time to work with our results.
Once you’ve collected your data, it’s time to do some math, to make some graphs, and to draw some conclusions based on our results.
When it comes to forming some conclusions about your question, based on the data, you’ll probably need to work with that data to learn the results.
The kids had the best time and we got to have a first hand look at developing a fair test aka: an experiment using the scientific method.
In our case, the kids:
One of the things we pondered was whether the size of the unpopped kernel would have any effect on the final volume of the popped corn?
By making this graph we were able to practice another step in the scientific process- data analysis. Can we use the raw data we collected and answer any more questions?
This graph took some tweaking because we used more of a qualitative approach to the data when it came to kernel size vs the quantitative calculation of volume.
Another lesson for the kids- which graph best represents our data? Not all graphs are for all types of data.
This information is best served by the all time favorite- bar graph! Kernel sizes were classified as small, medium, or large- extremely precise- absolutely!
So, you tell me…as our unpopped kernel size increased, what happened to the popped volume of corn?
Is there a trend?
You just need to be willing to answer questions with your kids and teens!
When your teen is working on a science problem and they ask why or how or will it, say let’s find out! Then just think about, with your teen, how you can find out the answer using the scientific method.
No time for a worksheet? No problem!
Grab the loose leaf paper and go with it.
In fact, I’m a huge fan of using loose leaf paper!
Sometimes it’s overwhelming to teach high school at home, especially when your teen is struggling. Join our community for small group mentoring and live calls with a membership library of over 100 replays on topics related to homeschooling high school.
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