Deep Space Sparkle

[lexi]

Has anyone done some of her lessons? What about her Art School for Kids? It looks like some of those are video lessons (are all of them video based?)

Anyway, my kids tried one and really enjoyed the lesson with video.

So I wanted to hear if anyone had experience with her program. Worth the cost? Do all the lessons contain a video?

[pitterpatter]

I drool over her video-based lessons. They are so pretty and I like what I saw in her southwest landscape freebie, but we've only used her traditional lessons from Teachers Pay Teachers. DD and I had never enjoyed art like we did the second half of last year. That was when we switched over from Home Art Studio to DSS. Before that we used Atelier. Those two programs feel stuffy and restrictive compared to DSS. Her written lesson instructions aren't always perfect, but the projects are great fun...to the extent that I complete them too. We had great results with the projects we completed last year. (Wishing now I would have gotten them up on my blog.)

 

The ones we completed were:

 

The Perfect Day - Snow Angels :001_wub:

Abraham Lincoln Portraits :001_wub:

Art in Literature, K-4 - Do You Have a Hat?

Art in Literature, K-4 - Splat the Cat

 

They each took two sessions to complete, except maybe the hat one.

 

DSS always participates in TPT's site-wide sales, so I'm waiting until then to pick up this year's lesson plans. The Back-to-School sale should be any day now. The discount is around 30-35% off. I am aligning my projects this year with 13 Artists Children Should Know. She has projects for about two-thirds of the artists in the book.

 

I didn't even know about her Art School for Kids (or maybe I did). It must be relatively new. I was looking at this, though. I'm curious to see the price and what it's all about.

 

https://deepspacesparkle.leadpages.co/members-club-coming-soon/

[lexi]

Well it looks like you can buy grade-level packages. Each grade has 6 lessons that have PDF instructions and a video. However, each grade level is $65 it looks like. So $65 for only 6 weeks worth of art.......I'm not sure that's a great price. Does that seem expensive? So, that price is definitely not in the budget if it doesn't even get me a full semester of art. I need to price out other programs and see how it compares. But we loved the lesson that we did. I wish there were more per grade level so we could cover a year of art (and I wish it weren't quite so expensive). I guess I'll keep looking!

[pitterpatter]

Can you tell whether the lessons are set up to be completed in one sitting? So far, the lessons I've used from DSS are primarily set up to be completed over two periods of art in a traditional school setting. Several of them require paint to dry, etc. In the lessons I've used, she includes the stopping points. We create art once a week, so even though we only completed four DSS lessons last year, they took 7-8 weeks/art sessions to complete. It's possible that these projects will take longer than six weeks to complete.

 

It does seem expensive to me as a homeschooler. For the traditional school setting where potentially hundreds of children will use the lessons, it's likely a bargain, particularly if those schools aren't paying for an IRL skilled art teacher.

 

August 1-2 is the TPT Back-to-School site-wide sale. I'm going to stock-up on some printed lessons tomorrow. I have one video lesson in my cart. Not sure whether I'll pull the trigger on it.

 

Well it looks like you can buy grade-level packages. Each grade has 6 lessons that have PDF instructions and a video. However, each grade level is $65 it looks like. So $65 for only 6 weeks worth of art.......I'm not sure that's a great price. Does that seem expensive? So, that price is definitely not in the budget if it doesn't even get me a full semester of art. I need to price out other programs and see how it compares. But we loved the lesson that we did. I wish there were more per grade level so we could cover a year of art (and I wish it weren't quite so expensive). I guess I'll keep looking!

 

[BonnieLK]

Pitterpatter will you tell me what the TPT site is? I've been looking at Deep Space Sparkle and would love a bit of a price break. Thank you.

[BonnieLK]

Sorry, the TPT site.

[lexi]

TPT is Teachers Pay Teachers

[pitterpatter]

Well, that's weird, DSS doesn't have her products on sale today. I wonder whether she's on vacation or something and isn't aware of the sale. (TPT doesn't tell sellers much ahead of time. And if she didn't log in, she may have missed it, as sellers don't always receive e-mail notices of the sales for some reason.)

[mrsduenes06]

I know that this thread is really old, but thought I would add to it just in case others are thinking about Deep Space Sparkle. She now offers monthly and annual subscriptions to her site and we chose to take the plunge and invest in it, primarily because you get three bundles per month of lesson plans for grades K-6/7 that are yours to keep forever. Most of the lessons we have done so far have been a hit with our kids, but if you don't want to pay for subscriptions, she does have free projects on her site, and has published a book with 24 projects called Draw, Paint, Sparkle. We had our kids go to art lessons this past spring and had to pay $50/child + $15 for supplies each + a facility fee - all said, it added up to almost $300 for 14 weeks of lessons, or $20/lesson, and I was very disappointed with what they did there. When you consider that you can use the lessons for all of your children and download them, many of her lessons are only about $.60/lesson, and you can use them in co-ops, teaching your own classes, etc. She also has an EPIC Curriculum that covers all of the elements of art in 1 year for each grade level and is coming out with a new art history curriculum (Art Through the Ages) that has videos for every single one of the 125 lessons this August. You can't download the videos if you decide to leave but they do make it easier to teach some of the lessons.