I love seeing the art my children create. I love it more when I can help to teach them that art from a Christian perspective. With Behold the Beauty (Grade K-1) written by Connie L. Meyer, I am able to do just that.

Behold the Beauty (Grade K-1), is a two-year art course. The first part is geared towards the Kindergarten grade and the second part is geared towards First Grade. Each section had twelve lessons. Each lesson can be spread out over the course of one week.

Behold the Beauty is a spiral bound book with 180 pages. The pictures that are included in the book are in color, but there are also hand drawings in black and white that show some of the steps of the lesson. Also included in the book are the templates you will need to make copies of for some of the lessons.

The beginning of the book introduces you, the teacher, to what you will be doing over the course of the next two years. It talks about the what and the how along with the why. Mixed in with this are a lot of different mediums of art, proportion, rhythm, and pattern to name a few. After reading all of this, you know what you will be teaching your children, how and why. This held a lot of great information for me since I am not very artistic, but my children are.

Each of these lessons was easy to understand. All of the supplies are listed along with vocabulary words for the lesson. There are speaking prompts for you as the teacher to help introduce the lesson. This was an excellent way for me to sound like I knew what I was talking about and to get my kids interested in the lesson.

As we learn about the different lessons and techniques, the author relates them to God and Bible passages. When we learned about the rainbow colors in lesson 5, the whole lessonrefers to the great flood and the rainbow that followed, even the art project for that lesson!

While this book was for K-1^st Grade, I used it with my 3^rd grader and 1^st grader. We started at the beginning, Kindergarten level, and we had no issues. Both kids really enjoyed learning the techniques of art, and I love knowing that as I was teaching them, I was also showing them the beauty of art that God has given to us in our everyday surroundings.

I look forward to using this book for the rest of this year and into next with my kids. I also plan to come back when my youngest is ready and use it again with her. This is an art curriculum that I can handle, one that I can teach without feeling inadequate in the art department, but still, one where my kids are learning and growing their love of art and learning about the beauty God gives us. As we finish this book up, I plan to continue using the Behold the Beauty series with my kids for as long as they have the books available.

—Product review by Amanda Hopkins, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, March, 2018