Homeschool Art Supplies: K-6

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and other affiliate programs. An affiliate advertising is designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. This post may contain affiliate links.

I love art. As an experienced art teacher, I love inspiring children to get messy and create art. This homeschool art supply list will get you started on your artistic journey.

I have never met a kid who will not get immersed in creativity when given the opportunity. Even those who are hesitant at first, often find a love for expressing themselves through an artistic medium.

Today I am sharing with you a list of art supplies I love to keep in my home. This list does not include every single thing you could use as an art supply, as anything can be art given the opportunity.

Let your imagination soar.

My Artistic Background

I have always been a creative soul. As a child, the craft supplies bin was always my favourite place to be. Creating art, with whatever I could get my hands on, was my passion.

When I was 10, I started private art lessons with a wonderful and inspiring woman. She introduced me to all sorts of new artistic mediums and techniques I had never heard of.

When I was 15, I volunteered at my local art gallery to teach art to children. The course was about Egyptian art – as that was the special exhibit in the gallery at that time. We carved hieroglyphs into plaster tablets that we made, sculpted canopic jars, and more. It was a wonderful experience.

I entered my first juried art show, at that same gallery, when I was 16. It was amazing seeing my work on the walls of a gallery.

In my 20s, I taught art lessons privately to budding artists. I focused mainly on painting as that is where my passion lies.

Painting

I believe that children deserve to use decent quality paints. Low-quality paints are hard to use, are not very pigmented, do not mix well, come in limited colours and are just not as fun to use.

But this does not mean you need to spend a lot of money. There are many affordable options for the painters in your homeschool art studio!

Acrylics

For my younger children, I like to buy them Apple Barrel craft paints. They come in a huge assortment of colours which are nicely pigmented and also mix well if you only buy a select few. The texture of the paint is also nice and it dries quickly (as long as they don’t apply overly thick!) which is nice for young artists.

For my older child, I have started buying him student grade acrylics. Liquitex Basics is a student-grade heavy body acrylic paint. If you have a child who really enjoys painting, especially on canvases, then I highly recommend investing in quality paints like these.

When using acrylics with my children, we typically like to paint on canvases. For my younger children, once they have graduated from craft paper, we like to paint on canvas boards. For special projects, we will also buy pre-stretched canvases. I frequently wait for the value packs of the Artists Loft canvases to go on sale at Michaels – they are a great price. When they are on sale, I will buy multiple packs of different sizes so that I have them on hand when inspiration strikes.

Watercolours

Like acrylics, there is a large difference between cheap paints and quality paints. Cheap watercolour paints lack pigment. For only a few dollars more, you can buy a watercolour set like this Artist’s Loft palette. If your child really enjoys using watercolour, a set like this Arteza set might be a good option for you.

When my children first start experimenting with watercolours, they will typically use printer paper to paint on. This is fine for experimentation but it will dry in weird ways so it is not good if you want to keep a portfolio of their work. I buy pads of 140lb watercolour paper. I like buying larger sheets than I can cut in half or quarters, or use the entire sheet for larger projects. The way watercolours go on the proper paper makes the experience a lot nicer for budding artists.

You can also buy watercolour crayons which are really fun to experiment with! We were pleasantly surprised with the Crayola ones but my Arteza set has a lot more colours and better pigmentation.

Brushes

Do not buy cheap brushes. I will buy cheap brushes for 2 uses. The first is to use with glue for certain projects. The second is for my toddlers who do not yet understand how to create the image they are seeing in their mind or who tend to stab the paper with the brush. Once a child starts creating identifiable artwork, I buy them good brushes.

Cheap brushes often do not create nice lines, they do not hold paint well, and are just generally frustrating to work with.

Depending on the type of paint you are working with, you will want to buy different brushes. If you buy synthetic brushes, you can use them for both but I like to have dedicated watercolour brushes and dedicated acrylic brushes because the two paints are used in different ways. I would recommend buying many different shaped brushes – round, flat, filbert, fan, and angled brushes are our favourite. By having an assortment, your student can experiment with the different effects that different brushes can produce. There is never a shortage of paintbrushes in our homeschool art studio (ie the dining room).

I, personally, prefer a softer brush for watercolours and a stiffer brush for acrylics just because of my style of painting.

Drawing

When your child is first starting to draw, I recommend providing them as many different materials as possible. From crayons to markers, coloured pencils and pastels. The more different writing instruments they can use, the more they can experiment and become comfortable using all sorts of different mediums. For my younger children, I just get these supplies from the dollar store or back to school sales. We go through so many of these throughout the year and I just love having them on hand. We draw on printer paper, construction paper, craft paper… you name it! Our homeschool art storage is full of different tools for drawing.

You can also get a whiteboard with dry-erase markers or a chalkboard and chalk! We have an easel from IKEA that is a whiteboard on one side and a chalkboard on the other. It also can be used with their rolls of craft paper!

Developing Artists

For my older son, who really has a passion for art and drawing, I have bought him a few more specialized drawing supplies.

One of his favourite supplies is his sketchbook. Because he likes to take his sketchbook wherever he goes, we bought him a hardcover book. That way, if he is drawing at the park, he does not have to worry about finding a solid surface to put his book on. We also went with a coiled book so he could open it up all the way, flip pages to the back, and focus on the page the is working on.

We also bought him quality drawing pencils in a wide variety of gradings and a kneadable eraser. At first, he wondered why I would even consider buying him pencils that cost more than $1 each when we could buy a whole pack of pencils for the same price. But, now that he uses them, he loves them and wouldn’t go back to a regular pencil.

The last thing a budding artist needs in his homeschool art supplies is a quality pencil sharpener. You do not want your cheap sharpener recking your good pencils or not being able to sharpen them to a fine point – so invest in a quality pencil sharpener!

Crafting

Crafting is a huge part of homeschool art, at least in my opinion. Encouraging and allowing your children the freedom to create whatever they want is amazing for their imagination, fine motor skills, and confidence.

I could talk through all the supplies, like a did above, but we would be here for days. So instead, here is a list of supplies I like to keep on hand. We get most of our supplies from the dollar store or back to school sales and just keep a big bin of them that the kids can grab from when inspiration hits.

We like to use these for general crafting and for STEM projects.

• construction paper
• printer paper
• craft paper
• assorted scissors
• liquid glue (we buy these big jugs and refill smaller bottles)
• glue sticks
• hot glue gun (to be used by adult or with adult supervision)
• pompoms
• pipe cleaners
• stickers
• craft sticks of different sizes
• polymer clay
• air dry clay
• beads
• yarn
• embroidery floss
• and honestly, the list could go on and on!

If you want a post dedicated purely to craft supplies, and how we organize them, let me know!

Free Homeschool Art Supplies

Our homeschool art projects often start with a walk in nature. It is amazing the number of things you can find, for free, in the wilderness.

From sticks, leaves, rocks, and flowers…

The possibilities of these natural art supplies are only limited by the imaginations of those collecting them.

You can even try collecting different materials to use as paintbrushes or stamps. This is a really fun project which involves a lot of critical thinking. As they are collecting materials, they can make a hypothesis about what kind of brushstroke or imprint that the found object might make. Different grasses and flowers can even be attached to sticks to create even more elaborate paintbrushes.

If you want a step by step on this project, let me know in the comments!

Online Resources

There are so many online resources for homeschool art projects. I wish some of these had existed when I was teaching. It would have been a lot easier to come up with ideas!

From YouTube to blogs, the options are endless. You can search by material, theme, or just a general search. There are so many wonderful suggestions that you can replicate or transform into something new!

The following, Skillshare and Pinterest, are two of my favourites.

Skillshare Classes

As much experience as I do have with art, I admit I do not know everything. One area I have not spent much time exploring is comic book characters or anime.

My children, on the other hand, LOVE drawing superheroes. They are often creating new characters or writing stories that involve their favourite superheroes.

To help them on this journey, I turned to Skillshare. Skillshare is an online platform with all sorts of classes on so many subjects. There is a class about drawing superheroes and all sorts of other art-related content. If you want to learn watercolour, calligraphy, or something else, there is probably a class for you. There are over 5000 art-related classes, many of which are marketed to children.

Pinterest

If you search “Children’s Art Projects” on Pinterest, you will be shown hundreds and hundreds of cool looking art projects that you can do with your children.

Perhaps you are looking for a holiday-related art project, there is tons of inspiration on Pinterest! Look at all these Halloween Art Projects For Kids!

You can even search by material – popsicle stick crafts or kid’s watercolour. The options are endless!

We are also on Pinterest – follow us!

I hope you enjoyed this list of homeschool art supplies. Being creative and allowing my children to express themselves through art and creativity is so important to me.

If your children create art that they would like to share with us, please tag us on Instagram @NourishingParenting!