According to a law passed in 2010, there is now a National Arts in Education Week in September. That’s significant, because it marks a time when the federal government decided to recognize that arts are important to education — which is not always a given, especially when budgets are tight. That’s the case this year, but thanks to the many, many online arts classes available these days, it doesn’t have to mean we’ll deprive our children of a creative education.
We honestly don’t know what our kids’ music and art classes (let alone fancier subjects like theater and dance) are going to look like in public schools this year, especially given the mess of in-person and distance learning. Some specialty teachers are having to teach regular academics in order to keep their jobs. Some are doing their best to turn their traditional curricula into online art classes. Some are teaching it in the classroom but with limited art supplies and contact with the students’ work, in order to maintain social-distancing. Whatever the situation, we really hope they figure out how to keep arts in the schools one way or another, because it is so necessary to making us human. People, and children especially, connect to each other and connect to their feelings through the art. And we hate to use this phrase, but now more than ever, we could really use those connections.
The kids art classes we have found online won’t take the place of a live studio, but they do temporarily fill that gap in our children’s lives. We’re not just talking about visual art, but also dance, theater, and music — which present more of a challenge in video instruction but has not yet proved impossible. So there are some awkward pauses thanks to Zoom. So the notes get a little warped and the color a little faded or exaggerated. If the Ancient Greek actors could manage without electricity on their stages, we can manage with an excess amount of it.
A strange side effect of the pandemic is that artists whose careers have been on pause this year have taken the time to share their talents with the next generation, whether to make ends meet or to feel connected to the world in some way. For either reason, we are forever grateful. This explosion in online art classes means that kids from all over the country can take a class in New York City or Iowa. And the subject matter available to them is endless. Does your kid want to take a standard watercolor class or enroll in a course about Japanese printmaking? Your ballet-loving child can take a five minute break from the barre (or a chair) and tune in to a free West African dance lesson sponsored by Lincoln Center. And if their school schedule is erratic, they have many on-demand options that will fit into other times.
Taking art home also doesn’t necessarily mean nonstop screen time. In addition to online art classes, we also have included subscription craft boxes and free printable projects, to give those eyes and devices a break. And we’re not suggesting that all our children will be creating masterpieces. This is about education and expression. Oh, and also, a lot of fun.
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Create on Demand With Udemy
Image Credit: Udemy/Em Winn. If your child’s schedule changes all the time, you may want something with on-demand video rather than live online classes. Udemy has a number of courses in art, music, and more, that include videos and written instructions that you can access anytime you want, for as long as you want to.
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Art, Music, Dance, Theater & More at Outschool
Image Credit: Outschool. Whether your kid is a budding Broadway star or just really likes doodling pictures of their favorite cartoon characters, there is probably an Outschool class to cater to their interests in small, live group video lessons. (Case in point: My son just took an art class that involved copying fine-art masterpieces while discussing the baking competition Nailed It!) Find one-time sessions, week-long camps, and ongoing courses, available all day long.
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Pursue Their Next Passion With Sawyer
Image Credit: Sawyer. This is another portal for independent artists, teachers, and schools to reach kids and their parents everywhere. Choose from drop-in classes and semester-long courses in more categories than you can think of. You probably never knew your child would excel at both making a puppet from recycled materials and writing a play for it, but maybe you’ll find that out when when they take this class from a circus training center in Illinois.
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Learn a New Craft Every Month With KiwiCo
Image Credit: KiwiCo. The subscription toy box company has a line called Doodle Crate, which delivers monthly arts and crafts projects for kids ages 9-16. While this isn’t exactly a class, the instructions for making things like homemade soap and a felt succulent garden are easy enough to follow without a teacher’s guidance.
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Get on the Art Team With Varsity Tutors
Image Credit: Varsity Tutor. This is another site where you can find dozens of live, small-group classes for kids of all ages in the topics they love most, from painting to film-making. Some of these classes are intense — three days a week for four weeks — while others are one-offs.
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Dance With the Masters
Image Credit: Los Angeles Dance Project. The dance company led choreographer Benjamin Millepied (a.k.a. Mr. Natalie Portman) has launched a subscription-based app full of video dance classes for adults and children. They can also watch exclusive performances and lectures, when they need to cool down.
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Fill Up Your Arts Schedule With KidPass
Image Credit: Kidpass. Originally meant as a way for New York City parents to find in-person extracurriculars for their children, the site has expanded to include a nationwide selection of online classes. You can subscribe or pay by class, and search for all kinds of enriching activities, including photography, music, crafts, dance, and more.
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Expand Their Minds With Skillshare
Image Credit: Skillshare. Though it’s typically a site for adults to learn new skills, Skillshare also has some courses that are perfect for the next generation of artists. The subscription-based site offers these in on-demand videos that are usually divided into small segments, so you can go at the pace that works for your kids, and maybe learn along with them.
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Enjoy the Process With Kid Made Modern
Image Credit: Kid Made Modern. A challenge for parents with artistic children is that no matter how many art supplies we buy, there’s still always something more we need to get. Instead of running out to the store all the time, sign up for a Kid Made Modern subscription box that will have everything your kid needs to make new works of art every month. The site also offers virtual courses, the price of which includes kits as well as multiple live video classes on how to do them.
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Drop in on the Guggenheim
Image Credit: Guggenheim. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City will soon be reopening its doors, but it is continuing to offer live online art classes for students on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. For $15, children in grades Pre-K through eighth can sign up to learn about subjects like photography, perspective, collage, or abstract form, that incorporate the museum’s collection into artwork the kids create themselves.
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Sparketh That Creativity
Image Credit: Sparketh. This site is like an online art school for our times. With a subscription, students can access on-demand courses in drawing, painting, baking, and other artistic topics for ages 6-18. They’re broken up into bite-size bits, so that students can go at their own pace and learn as they complete their work. They can also upload their creations into an online portfolio and have a one-on-one meeting with a Sparketh mentor once a month.
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Develop a Masterpiece in the ICA Lab
Image Credit: ICA. The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston moved its educational projects online this year, and it’s the perfect place for FREE art lessons when you want your kids to take a break from the screen. That’s because you can download and print PDFs of projects like this Shepard Fairey inspired stencil design instead of having them learn from a video.
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Learn in a New York Art Studio
Image Credit: Art Studio NY. A tiny silver lining of our times is that kids all over the world can take classes taught anywhere. If your kid dreams of being a real New York artist, why not start now with a semester-long course at the acclaimed Art Studio NY?
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Make All the World Your Stage With Lincoln Center
Image Credit: Lincoln Center. This spring, the performing arts hub took its talents to YouTube, with Lincoln Center Pop-Up Classroom. Kids can watch free short classes on everything from African dance to music composition to paper sculpture.
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Tread the Boards With Broadway from Home
Image Credit: Broadway From Home. It may seem tough to translate a theater class to the online setting, but we’ve seen it done quite successfully. These online theater workshops are a great way for kids who live far from the Broadway lights (which, of course, remain dimmed) to get access to top-notch teachers to work on skits, songs, and improv.
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Learn Why Art Matters With Khan Academy
Image Credit: Khan Academy. Most students don’t get the chance to take an art history class until college, which strikes us as pretty unfair to some of the biggest art fans we know. Log into Khan Academy and let them browse this course that discusses the different ways of looking at art and interacting with it.
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