Homeschool High School Honors World History: DIY Art History Artwork Cards

The teenager's Honors World History: Ancient Times course uses an AP World History textbook, a college-level art history textbook, and all the other additional resources you'd want in order to flesh the study of ancient history out into a full-year high school honors course.

Among the other many resources I've compiled and DIYed for this study, one of my favorites is the new set of DIY artwork cards that I prepare for every new chapter of Gardner's Art through the Ages, which in turn I've keyed to the relevant chapter(s) in Duiker's World History. 

Artwork cards are a major component of a couple of different pedagogical approaches to homeschooling, and you CAN buy sets of them--Memoria Press is generally considered to have the nicest, if you're in the market. But if you buy sets of them you're not going to get exactly the artworks that you want in the sizes that you want, and depending on where you buy them, copyright can be an issue. 

Another option, one that I also use, is buying museum gift shop postcards. I LOVE my sets of artwork postcards, and it's nice because they're always high-quality, I know they're not pirated, and I didn't have to do any of the work of sourcing, printing, and cutting out the images. But they're hard to buy online, and they're pricey! I would NOT have the collection of artwork cards that I do if I was paying a buck-plus for each of them. I mean, geez, my kid is going through twenty or so of these cards per chapter in just her current study! And that's not even counting the separate political art or history of photography studies that we've completed fairly recently, yikes.

So you've got options, but if you want the highest-quality, cheapest, most bespoke sets of artwork cards, you probably want to DIY them like I do. 

Step 1: Go through the study materials and select the images you require. 

I always pre-read the kid's textbook chapters so that I can collect additional resources and set up extension activities anyway, so while I'm reading her art history textbook I also note the artworks that are referred to in that chapter. Occasionally, there are also a couple that her history textbook refers to that the art history textbook doesn't, or I might want to collect different types of images referenced there, like the cuneiform tablets from the Mesopotamia chapter, or the Neolithic stoneworks from the Ancient Great Britain section. 

Step 2: Find the images online and save them.

There are three ways to find good images online. First is just to do a Google Image search and filter the results for Large images:

This is a screenshot from when I was collecting images for our History of Photography study, but the process is identical.

You'll often come across pirated images this way, but you're not using your images commercially, so I'll allow it, ahem. 

Another good way is a Wikipedia search, especially for more iconic artworks. You won't get any pirated images here, but you WILL get some lower-quality images, as many will be photos that contributors took themselves of the artworks in their museum settings. 

And then ANOTHER good way is to go directly to the website of the museum that hosts a particular artwork. A lot of museums do offer free downloads of digital images of many of their artworks. My special favorite is the British Museum, which will often let me download an image so high-quality that I can print it life-sized--I've done that for both the Rosetta stone and for several cuneiform and hieroglyphic pieces, and it's so cool and useful for detailed study! 

Here's one list of museums that offer open-source images, but it's definitely not comprehensive because the British Museum isn't even on it. 

Here's the British Museum's image site; I usually download or request the super-high-quality images, because why not! Wouldn't some large-scale Greek vase images look so awesome framed and displayed in my future Life of Theseus-themed bathroom?

Here's the Metropolitan Museum of Art's image site. I like that if you're not looking for a specific artwork, but rather a time period or style, you can filter your results by open-access so that everything you see is obtainable.

The National Gallery's image site provides open-access images and also provides many of the Wikimedia images. 

Here's the National Trust images site. Only some of these images are free, but there are images that work very well with British history and geography studies. 

The Smithsonian's image site pulls from all its museums and holdings across genres, so it's a great resource not just for art, but also historical artifacts and even primary sources. 

Step 3: Print and cut.

I prefer to print my images with a laser printer onto cardstock, because I want them to look and feel nice. To make the artwork cards a standard size, I print them four to a page--

--then cut them on a guillotine paper cutter:

I label the back with title, artist, date, and, for these art history cards, geographic location, and currently I have them filed by textbook chapter.

My teenager is also keeping a comprehensive ancient history timeline, so I print another set of these images as thumbnails onto regular copy paper, and then she glues them into her timeline and labels them. 

Okay, so how do you actually USE these artwork cards? There are so many ways!

• Flash cards. Memorize the artwork, title, artist, date, and geographic location to add to one's working knowledge of art history. Having a ton of artworks memorized will make it easier for you to slot future pieces into your memory, and allow you to build context and make better comparisons/contrasts, add to your understanding of social history, and write some kick-ass essays, etc.
• Sort and organize. Having these visuals at hand allows you to easily make comparisons about style and other features of artworks that may be less noticeable when each image is trapped in the pages of a specific chapter of your textbook. How do the early Native American earthworks compare to Neolithic European ones? How does portraiture vary, and how would you sort portraits stylistically when the images are separated from geohistorical context? 
• Order chronologically. We play a lot of history card games in which we have to try to put something in chronological order. We have almost all of these Timeline games, but you can play the same game with art, and not only is it interesting, but it builds a chronological understanding of art on a sensory level.
• Display. Once upon a time, a worker who was doing emergency repairs on our old, poorly-maintained, homeowner's special home came out of the kids' bathroom after installing a new toilet and asked me if I homeschooled. I was all, "Yes?" I thought it was the weirdest, most random thing for someone to figure out about me with zero evidence! But when I told this story to the kids later, they were immediately all like, "Um, it's because you tape educational posters to the wall facing the toilet?" Because riiiiight... when I want the kids to memorize something but I don't want to go through the emotional torment of MAKING them memorize something, I just print that thing out onto 8.5"x11" paper and tape it to the wall facing their toilet. I also once put tape onto ALL our things and made the kids label them in French and that's all still around, and every once in a while I printed out and assembled a giant line map of someplace we were studying, made them label that, too, and then hung it in the hallway until I was ready to make them study some other place. I also use pushpins to make little clotheslines across our bookshelves and I have the kids clothespin these art cards to them, and sometimes I'll display them on our magnet boards. I thought I was being sneaky like this, but apparently I wasn't, lol!

I should probably act like, since these images cost only the amount of the paper and the ink, and they're just cardstock, I'll recycle them when my last homeschooling kid graduates in a couple of months, but you know I won't. I won't have the kids to label me new giant maps for the hallway, so perhaps I'll retire them all permanently on display there!

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Kid-Free in New York City: Day 2 is When Dreams Come True!

We woke up to SNOW!!!!!!!

It was the perfect magical winter morning in New York City. I think the schoolkids even had a snow day? Happily, all the museums and other assorted tourist destinations stayed open, so after a breakfast of cold pizza, my partner and I bundled into our typical February midwestern outdoor gear and headed out into the magic.

Here in the elevator is when I finally got tipped off enough to Google our hotel and figure out that we were sleeping in a Republican stronghold:

I'm trying to visualize what a Republican women's Galentine Dinner even looks like, but to be honest I don't really know what a regular Galentine Dinner looks like, either, sooo...

Republican stronghold or not, our hotel was SO conveniently located! Just a couple of blocks walking through the snow, and here we are at the MOMA:

I'm not really an art aficionado, shame on me, so I mostly wanted to look at the famous stuff:

I was SUPER excited to see my pal Frida, though!

And words cannot describe my excitement when I saw THIS crowd:

What are they looking at, you ask? Why, none other than my old nemesis, Mr. Starry Night!

This 2,000-piece Starry Night puzzle and I have been locked in battle since early December.

It's an absolutely terrible puzzle, a miserable experience all around, ridiculously hard AND with pieces so poorly cut that they will fit in places they aren't supposed to be, and I tell it all the time that Vincent Van Gogh would be ashamed of how unpleasant it's being to me.

Fortunately, its real-life counterpart is delightful:

Also, I think the real-life Starry Night is actually smaller than my puzzle at home? Weird. 

I wish I had a 2,000-piece puzzle of THIS Van Gogh painting! I'm obsessed with it. It randomly feels like an illustration of some kind of Lovecraftian abomination--I keep seeing that curly beard as squid tentacles, and I don't know why, but I love it. 

Fortunately, my partner has a proper appreciation of art, although I absolutely saw him get chided by a docent for standing too close to one of the paintings. He says he was looking at the artist's brushstrokes, and I believe him, because unlike me he does not have intrusive thoughts that encourage him to maybe just lick the painting a little bit.

But don't worry--I didn't even lick the Mondrian, even though it's such a pretty red!

Nobody could lick the Monet, because they had a barrier up. It's so big, though, that how would you even decide where to put your tongue?

Warhol is surprisingly unlickable, even though he's literally painting food. It think it's probably because most of these soups sound disgusting. 

Pollack, on the other hand, is VERY lickable:

My self-control really won out, because not only did I not lick the art, but I also did not buy a hundred books in the gift shop. Instead, I sneakily and guiltily took photos of the ones I want so I could request them from the library when I got home. That big biography is actually already on hold for me!

After I'd seen all the stereotypical must-sees, my partner dragged me off to experience the proper modern art:

The giant stacked cubes didn't do anything for me, but fine, I DID love the giant hanging stuffed animal sculptures. My old Grumpy Bear is definitely there in that blue sphere:

After most of the day at the art museum, we'd built up sufficient good culture credit so we could, with clear consciences, then go do what is possibly the cheeziest, corniest, hokiest thing you can possibly do in New York City:

If you don't go to Ellen's Stardust Diner to eat overpriced food, drink overpriced (but healthily strong!) cocktails, and watch the waitstaff sing Broadway karaoke, then are you even a New York City tourist?!?

WE are PROPER New York City tourists!!!

The kids would have HAAAAATED it. There's a non-zero chance the college kid would have cried, because she's done that when less embarrassing things have happened in restaurants. The teenager would have never willingly left the house with me ever again. I had an absolutely astounding amount of fun.

Since we're already being corny, might as well take another swing through Times Square!

Okay, actually THIS might be the corniest thing we did in New York City, but when we were there last, every time we walked through Times Square, I swear there was an actual line out the door and around the block consisting of tourists waiting to get into the M&M store. This time, there was no line and we had a little time to kill, so in we went to wander:

And yes, I WAS tempted by the Pride merch. They might even have gotten me if they'd said that they were donating any part of their proceeds to any LGBTQIA+ organizations, because that sweater with the rainbow neckline is randomly very cute?

Saved by corporate greed!

I finally could not stand the suspense anymore, and we walked over to stand in line underneath the most glorious marquee in New York City:

I was so excited that I was about to cycle right around into a panic attack, but thankfully the line started moving and before I could freak out further, somehow I'd found myself in the third row center of the Walter Kerr Theater, holding an honest-to-god playbill and looking at the honest-to-god Hadestown set:

I sent this photo to the kids with the caption "!!!!", and got a serious of supportive exclamation points and keyboard smashes back. Daughters are the greatest gift a person could have.

Y'all, I was so excited at where I was that I did not even notice that every single other person in the audience was also in a flurry of excitement not because it was also their first time at Hadestown and they'd been waiting something like five years for this but actually because apparently LIN-MANUEL FREAKING MIRANDA was sitting two rows directly behind me? And generously doing selfies and autographs with people? And I did not even notice, and if I had noticed, I don't think I would have even cared. If it was Andre DeShields, probably... Eva Noblezada, definitely. 

Anyway, our seats were SO GOOD! We were a little too close to see the elevator set piece (come to think of it, two rows directly behind me was probably the perfect seat...), but the loss was worth it to have the hanging lights swinging over my head. I could see every expression on everyone's faces, and when the main characters knelt at center stage, I was essentially eye level with them. 

I've been a fan of musical theatre since I was 13 or 14 ("Phantom of the Opera" was my gateway original cast recording, and then I found "Hair," and then there was the year that I listened to "Evita" on loop...), but this was my first actual live Broadway show. I've watched so many pirated recordings of Hadestown on YouTube that I was actually surprised at how different, better, and more powerful it was to see it live. I mean, I obviously knew that it was going to be better and more special, but I figured I'd seen it multiple times on screen already, so the better and special parts would just be the experience of being there, like seeing my favorite band playing live after having only listened to their music on Spotify for years. But it was SO different, and SO much more special. Live theatre is this Whole Other Thing that is built between you and the actors and musicians brand-new every single time, this whole other ephemeral thing that you experience just the once, every single time. I'm a little glad that I don't live close to New York City and so can't dilute my memory by watching Hadestown every week, like I would absolutely want to. Even if I didn't get tired of it and instead became the Hadestown version of a Disney Adult, it surely wouldn't stay as magical in my memory as it is now. 

Best. Christmas present. EVER.

After the show, I still completely failed to notice the apparently revived Lin-Manuel Miranda fervor as everyone else but me who hadn't already seen him suddenly saw him, and instead my partner and I busted out of the theater (well, I did take a small detour, because a few minutes later my partner looked at me and was all, "Where did you get that Hadestown souvenir cup?!?" I said, "Someone just left it on the aisle floor so I picked it up!" I drank wine out of it last night while watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and it made me very happy), took a hard right just like the YouTube videos I'd watched told me to, and ended up here, hanging out in front of the stage door:

Here's where I FINALLY heard all the Lin-Manuel Miranda scuttlebutt, as everyone else was gossiping about it and showing each other their cellphone selfies. I've never met a celebrity out in the wild--do they mind having people come up to them and ask for photos and autographs when they're someplace like the theater? Like, I know they get paid an absolute ton of money, but they're not being paid right then, so is it rude to make them work when they're not getting paid, or do we just count all the ton of money that they ARE being paid as part of their compensation for having to take photos with tourists on their downtime? I have no idea, but I AM 99% certain that if Lin-Manuel Miranda had happened to have been seated next to me, he would never have experienced someone awkwardly ignoring him as hard as I would have, on account of I have no capacity for interacting with any strange human, much less a famous one. Just... shudder. 

Anyway, here's me not giving a flip that I didn't see Lin-Manuel Miranda with my own eyes!

So, my first stage door experience wasn't a bust, because the vibe was very good, I got all the Lin-Manuel Miranda hot goss that I'd been oblivious to while it was happening, and Sojourner Brown graciously came out and signed my playbill and gazed upon me with all her talent and beauty:

None of the other actors came out, though, because while we were all standing outside, freezing and gossiping about Lin-Manuel Miranda, the man himself was inside, comfy and warm and schmoozing up all of our actors!

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Ah, well. Back to the Republican stronghold, then, for shawarma-- 

--and bed. 

Tomorrow, I meet Winnie-the-Pooh! Shall I ask for his autograph and a selfie?

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Alchemy: A High School Chemistry/Geometry/World History Combo Study

We use CK-12's Chemistry for High School textbook as the teenager's spine for Honors Chemistry, with, of course, our own lab component added and a LOT of supplementation. 

We started supplementing right in Chapter 1, when we added a short study of alchemy to the textbook's brief history of chemistry.

I think that most teenagers find the concept of alchemy interesting--it's mystical and a little spooky, and it's very, very incorrect. Teenagers have SO much fun learning about adults who were incorrect!

Unfortunately, there really aren't a ton of great resources about alchemy that work well for a high school/undergrad readership, and there are a TON of contemporary, fantastical, and otherwise ahistorical resources that muddy up any kind of student-led research. 

Therefore, this study of alchemy was necessarily a short one, able to be completed within 1-2 hours. You could draw out the art component further, of course, by requiring a more polished piece that used a larger vocabulary of alchemical symbols and moves, but this brief afternoon's work was enough for our own purposes.

After reading the relevant material in the CK-12 Chemistry for High School textbook, my teenager and I watched this Crash Course History of Science episode (if your student isn't studying History of Science as a discrete topic, I highly recommend reviewing the playlist and adding applicable videos to their science/history syllabi as interdisciplinary enrichment):

Crash Course videos tend to be meaty, so it might be worth going over it a couple of times to make sure you absorb all the info.

After the video, my teenager and I looked through a number of alchemical illustrations and excerpts from alchemy books from alchemy's heyday. This Getty Research Institute's virtual exhibit is a treasure! Click on the link in the caption of most of the images to be taken to the digitized version of that book, which you can then flip through to find other interesting images and text. 

The teenager practiced her close reading to notice all the details in each piece of artwork, and used semiotic analysis to attempt to interpret the pieces. But also take time to notice how lovely each piece, is, as well; alchemy artwork is ART!

Using these pieces and some reference books, we then spent some time playing around with creating our own artwork that had (or looked like it had, lol!), alchemical meaning. The nature of the pieces also meant that the teenager could use the works she created as process pieces in her geometry art portfolio: 

Check out the accurate geometric shapes and the overall balance of the piece! DON'T check out my noisy digitization of the work; I really need to learn how to clean up art when I scan it, sigh...

That was as far as we took this particular lesson, but here's some further reading appropriate for an interested high school student:

• Alchemy: The Great Secret. This is a fairly accessible history for those who watched the Crash Course video but would like to learn more.
• Alchemy: An Illustrated A to Z. I wouldn't use this as a textbook supplement, but it was an excellent art reference. 
• Alchemy and Mysticism: The Hermetic Museum. Most of the text was beyond me, but it has tons of art to reference.

My favorite thing about alchemy is how it sits just next to being correct; like, they were wrong about the Sun and the Moon and dragon's blood and the mystical marriage of lead and tin, but while they were drawing their allegorical wedding feasts and busily melting silver in little pots, they were butting up against the actual chemistry that alchemy would evolve into. What they did reads now as adorably naive just because we know better, but these people were actually pretty bad-ass wizard scientists.

They also for sure all had lead poisoning, which explains a LOT of their artwork.

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Labor Day Weekend in Chattanooga: On Day 2, We Looked at Art and Walked across a Bridge

 

When I was planning Matt's birthday trip, I was actually looking for ideas more around Nashville, because I'm still paranoid about both of us traveling too far away from our nearly grown-up teenagers. It's probably very Smother Mother-ish of me, and I don't even care.

But then I saw a TikTok about the fantasy art exhibit at the Hunter Art Museum, and THEN I Googled and saw that there's also a free-play pinball museum there, and a few weeks later, there Matt and I were in Chattanooga!

I really wish we'd done more than drive through Chattanooga when the kids were small, because they would have LOVED IT HERE. On our morning walk to the Hunter, Matt and I passed the Tennessee Aquarium--

--including a plaza out front with a free splash pad and wading stream meant to resemble the Tennessee River just north of it.

We followed the stream past the aquarium, then turned down The Passage towards the Tennessee Riverwalk--

--and found an equally beautiful and interactive memorial to the Trail of Tears and the experience of the Cherokee Nation:

There were interpretive signs for all the symbols, and you could enter the stream at any point, walking down the steps towards the river in a graphic representation of the Trail of Tears.

At the bottom, there was another wading area. Children could play here, in this gentle reminder of former tragedy, and families could enjoy their time together here. 

I love it when spaces overtly defy the intentions of the original acts of cruelty that led to the need for a memorial.

It was a cloudy day for the Tennessee Riverwalk--

--but nevertheless I was stoked, because the forecast had told me it would probably be pouring all day. We hardly got rained on at all, so yay!

THIS is why we came to Chattanooga!

Matt and I both love fantasy fiction. He loves fantasy video games, and I used to play D&D like mad (I'm a half-elf bard at heart, y'all), so this was the BEST exhibit for us!

Prince Valiant is still running, and it is so good!

This is Grendel's Mother, by Yoann Lossel, because fantasy art isn't all dragons and skeleton pirates:

But SOME of it is dragons!

I don't think I owned the D&D guide this art was on the cover of, but I've definitely seen it and used it!

This artist, Scott Fischer, also did the cover of Peter Pan in Scarlet:

And look what else I found!!! DINOTOPIA!!!!!!!

The family love affair with Dinotopia is a long one, and I'm always thrilled to see Dinotopia in the wild! I've just learned that James Gurney actually sells prints of his Dinotopia art, and OMG I want them.

It was really fun to see all these illustrations from beloved books. Here's an Arthur Rackham illustration:

I've got his illustrated Alice in Wonderland, but I think of him more as a fairy tale illustrator.

And here's an illustration from The Lost World:

We did The Mysterious Island as a family read-aloud one magical year, and I remain nostalgic for all things Arthur Conan Doyle.

Here's just the "do not touch" sign at the base of a giant Bigfoot bust:

And here's the skeleton pirate I referenced!

That's another James Gurney illustration. 

This exhibit was presented by the Norman Rockwell Museum, because apparently Normal Rockwell was really into fantasy art. I went to the museum's website to buy the exhibition catalogue and accidentally got completely sucked into learning more about Norman Rockwell and his art--I thought of him as a painter of schlocky sentimental subjects, but then I watched this virtual exhibition of his Civil Rights art and now I'm hooked. 

After looking at every single thing in the Enchanted exhibition twice, we eventually made our way into the rest of the museum and looked at the rest of the American art!

self-portrait in a fancy plate

Diamond in Milk by Amber Cowan, using thrifted, upcycled, and found glass

Efflorescence, by Judith Schaechter

Under the Sun, by Andy Saftel

I found a quilt!

Black Star Family, First Class Tickets to Liberia

This is so timely, because I recently met with one of my Girl Scouts who's working on a Gold Award project about introducing more Bipoc authors and artists into her classical school's curriculum. We had a great discussion about the politics and power dynamics involved in determining whether an artwork or piece of literature is "canonical," and one of the examples that we discussed was types of art that aren't traditionally recognized as such, but are still art, like quilts. I'd been thinking more about the Gee's Bend quilts when I brought up that example, but here's another quilt!

I really like the details, especially the use of netting and tulle to add shading to parts of the quilt:

Matt laughed at me for taking pictures of the seating, but you guys, this is what it is to be known!

Seriously, why are museums so freaking exhausting?!? You're just walking around really slowly and standing a lot! WHY AM I SO TIRED AND MY FEET HURT?!?

Rule #1: When you find a mirror, you take a selfie!

I'm a bad vacation photographer, because I think this is our only photo together during the whole trip. Oops!

I did take a lot of photos of Matt, though. Here he is becoming art!

I also pestered the kids by constantly sending them pictures of art that they'd think was funny. Like, here is literally a photo of Matisse:

His muse was apparently 500 pigeons!

And here's an actual photo of me when I get some bread:

When we eventually made it out to the sculpture garden, I was happily amazed to see that it still wasn't raining on us!

And that meant that we could achieve my afternoon plan of walking around the sculpture garden--

--and across the Walnut St. Bridge!

There's the Hunter Art Museum behind me:

Matt does not like to stand near the edge of things, but he consented for this one photo:

Another view east, with the Hunter and a little island in the middle of the Tennessee River:

And the view west:

We didn't go over to this carousel, but I love seeing another antique carousel out in the world being used and loved!

I was VERY sad that the restaurant I'd been hoping to eat at had a sign on its front door saying it was closed for remodeling, so instead we went to a Mexican restaurant so I could eat a quesadilla and drink a spicy margarita.

My spicy margarita was super deliciously spicy, and the waitress said that the bartenders infuse the tequila with jalapeños to make it. So now I have another project for my to-do list!

Don't tell the kids, but afterwards we did a tiny bit of shopping to fill up their Christmas stockings:

Did you know that Chattanooga is the home of the Moonpie? I think Moonpies are gross, but the kids are thrilled by them, so we brought them home a bundle.

Fun Chattanooga street art:

After a while the clouds were starting to look more looming, so we walked back to the hotel to read, nap, swim, and eat leftovers for dinner. 

And then we ate at the most touristy ice cream shop in the country:

I promise that I did have some local, indie, authentic ice cream shops pinned on my Google Map, but Ben & Jerry's was both closer and, when we got home and I told the kids where we'd eaten, they acted like we had gone to the White House and shaken Daddy Biden's hand, they were so amazed and astounded that Ben & Jerry's! Has a real storefront! Where you can get Phish Food in a waffle cone!

Never let it be said that we do not live large on our grown-up vacations!