Lily & Thistle Art School
If you know me - you’ll know that my art skills are pretty limited, ha! So, I’m especially grateful for others who share their talents and help my kids out. We’ve been using on-line art courses from the Lily & Thistle (L&T) for about a year and a half now and absolutely love them! If you’re looking to add some great art education to your home these courses are fantastic. Here are a few things that are helpful to know.
Courses
There are three main courses available. All of the courses are on-line and self-paced. They come with detailed supply lists, video tutorials, and text or PDF documents to support the tutorials. Also, many of the tutorials have traceable sketches. If you or your older children love to draw - you can totally sketch your own work, but having templates for younger children (and also for those of us who don’t have great drawing skills) is wonderful. I also really appreciate the video tutorials because then I don’t have to try to model it for my kids. This frees up my hands to help my children or I’ve even done some of the tutorials with them. I also like that we can pause the tutorials and work at our own beginner’s pace. Any of the courses can be purchased as a one time payment with full lifetime access or you can also just subscribe to a monthly membership. I did the lifetime access on all three of them.
Watercolor School: In this package there are 10 art courses with over 150+ video tutorials. This is a great package especially if you’d like to learn more about how to use watercolor and bring in seasonal and holiday art projects into your home or homeschool. The courses included are: Modern Watercolor Basics, Simply Florals, Intro to Landscapes, Painting Nature, Colors Course, Backyard Bird Bundle Calendar, Spring Water Color Bundle, Summer Watercolor Bundle, Autumn Watercolor Bundle, and Winter Watercolor Bundle. (L&T recommended age 5+)
Nature’s Art Club: Have you ever wanted to have one of those beautiful nature journals or equip your kids with the skills to do so? This is going to be the course to help you do that! There is a whole section just on nature journaling. In this course you’ll also find basic watercolor painting tutorials, drawing tutorials, colored pencil tutorials, birding instructions, nature themed activities and crafts, links for educational nature videos, and poetry. (L&T recommended age 8-10+ for drawing and colored pencil tutorials and all ages for nature journaling and crafts.)
Art Makes Me Smart: Around the World: This course is my personal favorite! Learners explore 12 countries through art: Greece, France, Mexico, India, South Africa, Italy, Australia, Scandinavia, China, United Kingdom, Spain and Russia. There are two art tutorials available for each country. What I especially love is that there are also video resources for music, dance, recipes, and lots of booklists to explore the culture of these places. (L&T recommended age 7+)
Other Recommendations & FAQ’s
Supplies: Lily and Thistle has a great supply list for every course. We already had variations of a lot of products they recommend and they’ve worked just fine for us. So just know it’s easy to adapt if you already have a good investment in art supplies. If you don’t, I’d go with their recommendations.
One of the things we’ve found helpful is also having a light board for tracing. We’ve had this one for years. You can also shop my general art supply list here.
What course should I start with? We started with the Watercolor School and then eventually added the other courses. However, if I had to choose just one, I would choose the Art Makes Me Smart: Around the World course since it’s our favorite.
What are the best ages for these courses? I added the ages Lily & Thistle recommends by each course. But, my personal opinion is that Art Makes Me Smart: Around the World is easiest to adapt for early elementary ages. Even my 4 & 6 year olds have completed some of the projects with us (see our Gond style picture of the birds). And, many of the suggested books and videos are engaging for younger children. I think most video tutorials in the Watercolor School and Nature’s Art Club are best suited for children in upper elementary (like ages 9-10+), but I will say my son has completed projects in these as young as 6. In Nature’s Art Club there are also lots of craft activities that are fun for younger kids. And, if you do have a young child who is particularly interested in art and has well developed fine motor skills then any of the videos in these courses will be great.
On the other hand, I also get asked if these courses would be too easy for middle school, high school, or adults and my answer is definitely not. I have learned a lot in these courses and they’re really great for anyone who is looking to improve their art skills.
How do you utilize use the courses with homeschool? I like to supplement our other curriculum with projects from any and all of the courses. There are SO many ways you can use these courses, but for us, we use Watercolor School mostly for holiday or seasonal projects. We’ve dabbled in Nature’s Art Club as it has coordinated really well with our nature studies. I’m hoping to pull more from this next school year! And, we’ve also been able to add a lot of the Art Makes Me Smart: Around the World projects with our history studies. Though, I also think it would be fantastic for geography and culture studies obviously.
My only other tip is to plan a little bit longer than the video tutorials show. I remember opening our first video and seeing it was 10 minutes and thinking, oh, this will go quick…and that definitely wasn’t the case, ha! Art takes time and some of the tutorials we’ve had to split up over a couple of days even though they appear short. Once you get in and try the courses, you’ll be able to quickly learn how much time to a lot based on skill level and what type of projects you’re doing. Let me know if you guys have any other questions! Enjoy!