The School of Art Book Review || By Teal Triggs & Daniel Frost

As a mum to three boys, it's so important that I encourage them to continually learn and develop their skills and to find new ones. All three of my sons are different and we embrace that, although they are different there are a few base skills that they're all interested in as are most children; maths, telling the time, sports, creative writing and art.

I remember being around six when my own dad decided to teach me about 3d objects, how to shade and how to draw realistic images - I was engrossed and I think it was the start of my passion for the creatives. These days I do teach my sons all I can, I also find that they respond well to visual lessons such as books or Youtube videos.

The School of Art by Teal Triggs and Daniel Frost is one of those visual aids that have been a huge hit in our house with all three of my sons. The book itself although it's very educational the illustrations stop it from becoming boring.

The books a pretty lofty sized square with forty lessons split into three terms. Each lesson covers a teachable art lesson that simply makes sense. Some of our favourites were:

How does a line begin? || Lesson one sounds very basic but it's also one of the hardest things to do freehand. This lesson gives great examples and ideas for line work such as creating dots first and then joining the dots to make lines.

Can we see colours that aren't there? || You know, this is a question I had never considered and I took advanced art and then art and design at college - not once did our teachers ever really discuss this topic. This lesson covers eye tricks and how looking at certain shapes or colours together can trick the eyes into seeing 'in-between' tones.

How can we tell a story by using pictures? || This is lesson thirty-five you can actually see the illustration for this below.

Not only is the wording easy to follow but the illustrations lend themselves to the lessons really well. It's sort of like the dummies guide to art by pictures.

My eldest son loved this section which came under the ''What different things can we use to make art'' it got him thinking about the other types of art that he's made that would still be classed as genuine art. His understanding was that art equalled paper and colour - he has Aspergers so his literal thinking is very black and white, reading this section and seeing the almost engineering type of illustration helped something 'click' in his genius brain.

This is the illustration for ''Why are ideas important in art and design?'' I absolutely adore this image and this section as it gets the boys thinking about how they can take an obscure image and turn it into a real tangible art form. When we reached this section my youngest son who's six was asking if he could actually draw a sword made of chips or would that be silly, personally I thought it was genius because who doesn't want a picture of a sword made of chips?

This was my middle son's favourite section as he's always been a huge fan of comics and short stories. This lesson taught him how we could move through his ideas in a limited amount of spaces, the illustration of a butterfly's life was the perfect example to teach him about transitioning.

My eldest is nearly ten and my youngest is six - this is the type of book that isn't limited to an age range of gender. As an adult, I found I also learnt lots of new ideas and skills and will happily pull this out when I'm planning my next creative project.

The book costs £14.99 RRP but you can pick this up for less over on Amazon. If you're child's still of school age and you know you're going to be roped into many home art projects then I'd fully recommend picking this up.