Homeschool Scouts: How to Count Boy Scout Badges as Arts Curriculum

Homeschooling Boy Scouts can learn a lot about art while earning boy scout badges. Earning these same scout badges can be the equivalent of completing a high school or middle school art course. If you cluster these badges together in groups, they will look great on a high school transcript, especially when the student is interested in an art related career. The following groupings may work for you, and you will see how you can form an actual class from a series of boy scout badges.

Introduction to visual arts can be comprised of the art badge, the painting badge, the pottery badge, and the sculpture badge. The Art Badge teaches basics like exposing a student to art history, telling a story in pictures, designing a logo, and using different art mediums like pen and ink, watercolor, pencil, etc. The painting badge teaches about color choice, properties of different types of paint, the best paint for different surfaces, and caring for a painted surface. The pottery badge teaches students how to make three dimensional art objects and how to use a pottery wheel and kiln. The sculpture badge goes further into detail teaching the student to recreate a head in modeling clay, make a plaster of an item, and to visit and art gallery or artists studio.

Your boy scout homeschooler would get a good intro to Architecture while earning the Architecture, Model Design and Building, and Landscape Architecture badges. The Architecture badge teaches the student to observe buildings and recognize different styles and time periods. The model design and building badge students how to build architectural and other models to scale. The landscape architecture badge teaches the students about designing landscapes to complement architecture and for functional purposes.

Your homeschool scout would get a great deal of exposure to crafts by earning the Basketry, Leatherwork, Metalworking, Woodcarving, and Woodworking badges. These badges are all pretty explanatory and feature hands-on creation of different projects.

Computer art can be learned by a homeschooled boyscout who earns the Drafting (computer aid design) and Graphic Arts badges. The drafting badge teaches the student to draw for manufacturing and to recreate those drawings on a computer. The Graphic Arts badge teachers the student skills such as lithography, screen printing, digital printing, and relief printing. The student will visit printing plant and college printing department. They will also investigate websites and learn about career opportunities in graphic arts.

There are also badges that instruct a student in performance art should they decide to earn those badges. Such badges include Music, Bugling, Theater, Photography, and Cinematography. They teach students different avenues of performance including recording performances.

This is just a few examples of how you can organize art badges to award high school credit. You can organize them according to interests. As you can see, earning all of the art based badges would lend to giving the student and excellent arts based education.