To read about “Our Twist” in general, please click here.
ART
Art can be very expressive of feelings and emotions but that is not always the main purpose of it. We don’t get into a lot of busywork, art history, sculptures, or analysis of famous paintings in our product-line. We want to encourage good, creative imagination but we especially want to focus on the development of physical skills that can be applied in other areas of life.
Peppermint Stick Learning Company Inc. focuses on these aspects of the visual arts:
Art skills are practical for developing fine motor coordination (which in turn helps with writing and work such as screwing things together, taking out slivers, etc.).
Art skills are practical to make a teaching tool or visual reminder for better memory of something. (These skills are also helpful to know when designing presentations in other subjects, even as an adult.)
Art can be a craft that teaches a specific skill such as weaving, mixing colours, making candles.
Art can be a reflection/expression of worship to God.
Our art curriculum leaves the creative expression part up to the individual student while giving guidance for a variety of skills. It is intended to fit well into a busy home life with a number of children of varying stages. Our art curriculum (printed book format or printable pdf ebook) a resource to be used year after year and is arranged with multi-grade teaching in mind.
We also sell professional artwork which can be used for additional crafts or Bible Memory, in the home or in ministry settings such as Sunday Schools or camps.
A “Mom-to-Mom” comment: If you want motivating and beautiful drawing or painting lessons for your children on a regular basis, you might like to subscribe to the Nature Friend Magazine: https://www.naturefriendmagazine.com/
(Full disclosure: We do not receive any compensation for recommending you to Nature Friend. This link is here because sometimes our audience wants to find curriculum for drawing/painting lessons and we don’t offer much of that in our business. We do though, have a title for drawing lessons that is associated with Nature Friend.)
NEW – A Workshop about ART!
In May 2020, we made our first video presentation for a homeschool online conference! And the topic is ART! 🙂 If you want to see it “live” (and even have the opportunity to ask questions for a few minutes afterwards), you can register for the full conference (June 13-19, 2020) at the website of ACPEQ (Quebec) – at this link here . (This is not an affiliate link.)
This very visual video workshop is almost 51 minutes in length and covers a lot of tips and principles relating to teaching art, including thinking about it from a Christian perspective. We’re pretty sure it is quite a bit different than most workshops you’ve seen before. Most of it was filmed in our backyard. Our family was involved and a “surprise guest” shows up for this too. It was a lot of fun to put this together and learn some basics of video-making! 🙂
General notes for this workshop is provided in a link below IF there is a conference currently using this workshop so that you can sit back and relax to watch it. (It is a free downloadable pdf printable.) (Otherwise, the notes are not available.)
Art Workshop NOTES (click here for the printable on the conference date)
Attention Homeschool Leaders: If you are wanting this workshop for your future conference or online library or similar, you are welcome to contact us directly with your request. (At this time, ART is the only video workshop we offer. However, some of our product pages DO have short flip throughs of curriculum resources in video format.)
HOME ECONOMICS
We sometimes sell recipe books, especially those relating to outdoor life, homesteading, or Mennonite-style of cooking. Titles vary and are not always in-stock. Occasionally we also sell a child’s mop, broom, or similar homemaking items (in-person only).
We sometimes sell home organization paper stationary items such as bookmarks, stickers, writing papers, blank journals but these are not listed online at present.
If you are looking for something in particular, you are welcome to ask us about it.
Check our “Organizing a Busy Home and School” blog posts for additional ideas too.
Physical (Activity) Education
How you accomplish providing “Phys. Ed” for your children depends on YOUR OWN family’s goals, abilities, and opportunities for where YOU live. You can read more about what WE like to do in this post here and see any current books we offer for this subject in the Home Economics section.
We like to encourage a physical education that is both fun and practical – skills for work and play!