My oldest child is gearing up to enter her junior year of high school. And though she loves art and is constantly creating her own, I realized I’d never done an arts appreciation or art history course at the high school level. Until now that is. We were asked to review The Master and His Apprentices: Art History from a Christian Perspective from The Master and His Apprentices.
It was the perfect opportunity for my daughter to receive some high school credit for a course she was truly interested in!
What Is The Master and His Apprentices: Art History from a Christian Perspective?
I received a PDF download of the Teacher’s Guide and the student text. Both of these are also available in a print format.
The textbook contains 380 pages. It starts with an introduction to art, then covers art from creation through modern art in chronological order. A final chapter dives into non-western art around the world.
This book is packed full of colored photos of art, maps, and timelines to help add a visual element to the text. Everything is from a Christian perspective, giving God credit for being the master artist who created things of wondrous scope and design. It reinforces the fact that His creativity is what inspired artists throughout history and continues to do so today.
This book aligns the art to important events in history. Here is a quick screenshot of one of the timelines so you can see the type of information included.
The Teacher Guide
The 116 page Teacher Guide contains the information parents need to help their students use this product and earn high school credit. You’ll find:
- A schedule to use this course into 36 weeks (with 1 hour per week of instruction plus additional student assignments to complete the credit)
- 4 exams and answer keys
- Directions for the written papers student will complete (there will be four of those throughout the course, each a minimum of five pages)
- A scoring guide to help you keep track of student progress through the course and record scores
- A sample syllabus
- Discussion questions for each lesson (and answers)
The discussion questions can be done orally or written out. They were very thorough and definitely at a high school level. They were mostly open-ended, allowing students to think about what they had read and seen, and incorporate their own evaluations of the art. Here’s a sample:
How We Used This Product
Since my daughter has been homeschooled since first grade, she’s never before had a teacher hand out a syllabus. I used this as a teaching moment to introduce her to the concept, since she’ll be heading to college in a couple of years and using those frequently!
I told her to ignore the dates (since we were starting at the end of the school year instead of the beginning) and to use the syllabus to see what her assignments were each week. She was able to open up the PDF and read the necessary pages.
There is a link on the sample syllabus so you can go in and edit the content, including changing the dates. I just didn’t do that part. 😀
Once a week, we talked about what she’d read. I typically assigned one or two of the questions as written work. Then we used the rest orally.
Her first exam and written paper are approaching. I think the discussion questions really helped prepare her for success on both of those.
What We Thought of The Master and His Apprentices: Art History from a Christian Perspective
I really appreciated the depth of material covered in this program. It wasn’t just art history or appreciation as a stand-alone topic. Instead, it wove art into human history. Since my daughter had just completed World History, it was nice for her to see the art corresponding with these time periods.
I think this would make an excellent study to go alongside a world history program!
My daughter enjoyed all of the art in the book. She enjoyed learning more ways to evaluate and express herself when it comes to art. She plans on continuing to finish the program and earning her art appreciation credit.
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