ArtAchieve

ArtAchieve is a video-based art program from veteran art teacher John Hofland, organized around projects inspired by folk art and cultural artifacts from around the world. It is among the more thoughtfully internationalist art curricula in the homeschool market, and its per-lesson pricing structure is unusual, and unusually friendly to families who want to sample before committing to a full level.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Subject-specialist / video-based / project-driven
Worldview	Faith-neutral (secular in content; no religious framing)
Grades	K-2, 3-5, 6-8 (Levels I-VI, progressing in difficulty)
Formats	Streaming video with downloadable lesson PDFs
Cost tier	Budget
Parent intensity	2
ESA-common	Yes (digital art instruction typically approved where allowed)
Accredited	No
Established	2014
Website	artachieve.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	3	Strong on technique and cultural context; less rigorous on formal art theory
Ease of teaching	5	Video does the teaching; parent sets up supplies and prompts the child
Content quality	4	Hofland's folk-art approach produces genuinely interesting projects
Flexibility	5	Per-lesson pricing and one-year license structure accommodate any schedule
Value for money	5	Roughly $50 for an entire level; free trial lessons available
Worldview scope	5	No religious content; usable across every worldview
Visual/design	4	Clean site, well-produced video, clear on-screen demonstrations
Support resources	3	Cross-curricular extensions provided; publisher is small

Who the publisher is

ArtAchieve is the homeschool art business of John Hofland, a veteran art teacher with decades of classroom experience who built the platform beginning in 2014. Hofland's pedagogical stance is that art can be successfully taught by non-artists, parents without drawing backgrounds, if the lessons are structured correctly, and that structure is the platform's core contribution. ArtAchieve received a Favorite Fine Arts Program recognition from Homeschool Review in 2016.

The operation is small in publisher terms: Hofland is the creator, designer, and instructor. The catalog is organized around six sequential Entire Level bundles (Levels I through VI), each containing roughly eight to fourteen individual lessons. Lessons are also purchasable individually, and free trial lessons are offered on the site. Distribution is direct through artachieve.com; the platform is not sold through third-party retailers.

ArtAchieve's worldview positioning is faith-neutral by design. There is no religious content, no doctrinal framing, and no attempt to align with any specific tradition. Folk-art projects draw from cultures around the world. Ukrainian pysanky, Mexican papel picado, Japanese fish printing, West African adinkra, Native American beadwork, presented respectfully and contextually, with brief introductions to the cultural tradition each lesson references. Christian, Jewish, secular, Catholic, Muslim, and every-other-worldview families use the program identically.

The core pedagogy

An ArtAchieve lesson is structured around a single folk-art inspired project. Each lesson begins with a guided warm-up drawing that teaches the shapes and lines the student will use in the final piece. The student then watches Hofland walk through a reference sketch of the project, followed by color and detail additions, ending in a completed piece. Extensions in the same lesson connect the project to language arts, math, or science, the Ukrainian pysanky lesson, for example, includes brief language-arts context on Ukrainian folk traditions and a math extension on symmetry. Cross-curricular tie-ins are optional; families focused on art alone can skip them.

The levels progress in complexity. Level I targets grades 1-2, introducing basic drawing and coloring with simple projects. Level II serves roughly grade 3, adding more detailed line work. Level III moves to grades 5-6 with more complex compositions. Levels IV, V, and VI add increasing technique and cultural depth, suitable through middle school. Students move through the levels at their own pace; the platform does not prescribe a week-by-week calendar.

Signature mechanics: (1) Folk-art project spine, every lesson is inspired by a specific piece of international folk art or cultural artifact, giving each project a real-world referent. (2) Guided warm-up drawings, a short practice drawing precedes each final piece, teaching the specific skills the student will need. (3) Video instruction with visible demonstration. Hofland actually draws on camera, narrating his choices, so students see technique performed rather than only described. (4) Cross-curricular extensions, each lesson connects to at least one other subject, allowing families to fold art into other lesson times.

A day in the life

A nine-year-old working through Entire Level III spends about forty-five to sixty minutes on an ArtAchieve lesson, typically once a week. The student opens the lesson on a laptop or tablet, gathers supplies (pencil, drawing paper, colored pencils or watercolors depending on the project), and watches the warm-up drawing segment, roughly ten minutes, copying what Hofland demonstrates. The main lesson runs twenty to thirty minutes of video, with the student pausing to work in parallel: drawing the reference sketch, adding detail, then applying color. After the video ends, the student may spend an additional ten to fifteen minutes finishing, signing, and photographing the piece. A family that adds the cross-curricular extension spends another fifteen to twenty minutes on the reading or math activity.

A seven-year-old working through Entire Level I works in shorter segments, the same structure in smaller bites, with more parental presence during the drawing phase. The parent's role is largely logistical: setting up supplies, queueing the video, helping the child manage materials. Hofland teaches; the parent facilitates.

What they do exceptionally well

Internationalist folk-art focus. The decision to draw projects from folk-art traditions around the world is the program's distinguishing feature. Students working through ArtAchieve encounter Korean celadon, Norwegian rosemaling, Mexican papel picado, and Native American traditions as actual art to practice, not as footnotes. The cultural framing is respectful, contextual, and genuinely international in a way most homeschool art programs are not.

Parent-independent instruction. Hofland's decades of classroom experience show in the video instruction. He narrates what he is doing as he does it, and the student watching can copy the movements with reasonable success. A parent with no art background can run ArtAchieve and the child still learns. Very few art curricula manage this; most assume the parent has some drawing capability.

Flexible pricing and commitment. Individual lessons at approximately $5 each, free trial lessons, and Entire Level bundles at roughly $53 for a one-year license mean a family can genuinely try the program with low risk. There is no multi-year subscription commitment. A family unsure about ArtAchieve can sample one lesson free, buy two more at $5 each, and only then commit to a full level if the fit is right.

What they do poorly

Limited formal art-theory content. ArtAchieve teaches technique through projects, which is effective at the elementary and middle-school levels the program targets. It does not teach formal art elements (line, shape, form, color theory, composition, perspective) in a systematic survey the way Artistic Pursuits does. A high-school student who needs a genuinely college-prep art-theory course will need to supplement or switch. ArtAchieve is explicitly an elementary-to-middle-school program.

One-year license structure can surprise families. Purchased Entire Level bundles are accessible for one year from purchase date. A family that stretches a level across multiple years needs to renew or re-purchase. This is an unusual structure in homeschool publishing, where most purchased materials are owned outright, and families should plan around it. The model is closer to a video streaming subscription than to a textbook.

Small publisher infrastructure. ArtAchieve is effectively a one-person operation. There is no phone customer service, no convention floor presence, no companion forum community, no supplementary resource library beyond the core lessons. The lessons themselves are strong; the surrounding ecosystem is minimal. Families accustomed to the depth of a Classical Academic Press or an Alfred Music will notice the contrast.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick ArtAchieve if: you want a secular, faith-neutral art program usable by any family; you want video instruction so the parent is off the teaching role; you value international folk-art content as the organizing principle; you want flexible pricing and the ability to purchase individual lessons; your child is in grades K through 8 and doesn't need formal college-prep art yet; you appreciate cross-curricular integration with language arts, math, and science.

• Skip ArtAchieve if: you want a print-based art curriculum with books to keep on the shelf; you want a single outright purchase rather than annual-license video access; you need high-school art with formal art-theory, art-history, and portfolio-building structure; your child works better with a structured, dated weekly calendar than with a self-paced library; you want the art program integrated with a specific religious tradition.

Cost honest assessment

As of April 2026, ArtAchieve offers Entire Level bundles at approximately $53 for a one-year license (a 25 percent discount from the roughly $70 value of the individual lessons combined), with Level IV bundled at around $50.40 and others priced similarly per level. Individual lessons are approximately $5 each, and free trial lessons are available to preview before purchase. Each Entire Level contains roughly eight to fourteen lessons.

Compared to Artistic Pursuits (roughly $47 to $65 per book for a multi-year art-theory and art-history-integrated program, with DVD editions at higher prices) and to Creativity Express (classroom-licensed video art at institutional pricing), ArtAchieve sits at the budget end of the video-art market. A family completing one Entire Level per year from kindergarten through grade 6 spends approximately $300 to $400 total for a full elementary art education, less if trial lessons and individual-lesson purchases are used to cherry-pick across levels.

ESA eligibility notes

ArtAchieve is a digital subscription-style product, video lessons with downloadable PDFs, delivered through the publisher's own streaming platform. ESA eligibility for digital art instruction varies by state. Arizona's ClassWallet has historically approved digital-art subscriptions; Florida's Step Up For Students typically reimburses digital curriculum where specified; some states restrict recurring-subscription models or one-year-license products. Families should verify ArtAchieve specifically within their state marketplace, ideally before purchase, since digital-art offerings are sometimes handled under different category rules than print curriculum. The secular content makes religious-restriction concerns irrelevant.

Alternatives

• Artistic Pursuits, a family would choose Artistic Pursuits over ArtAchieve for a print-based art program with systematic art-theory and art-history integration, covering K-12 with DVD editions available.
• Chalk Pastel (Hodgepodge), a family would choose Chalk Pastel over ArtAchieve for a similarly video-based but more budget-friendly single-medium program focused on building confidence through chalk-pastel projects across ages.
• Masterpiece Society Studio, a family would choose Masterpiece Society over ArtAchieve for a subscription-based video-art program with broader technique coverage, adult-level options, and stronger community features.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the ArtAchieve website at artachieve.com, the Entire Level product pages, the individual lesson-purchase structure, the free trial-lesson offerings, and the company's 2016 Homeschool Review Crew Favorite Fine Arts Program recognition. We cross-referenced against published reviews of the program from the homeschool review community, including detailed walkthroughs of Level II, IV, and V content, and sample lesson videos available directly on the ArtAchieve platform. Biographical information on John Hofland's teaching background was confirmed through the publisher's About materials.

A note on ArtAchieve's category: the homeschool art-curriculum market broadly splits into three shapes, print book series (Artistic Pursuits, Meet the Masters), single-medium video programs (Chalk Pastel, Alisha Gratehouse), and project-based multi-technique video platforms (ArtAchieve, Masterpiece Society Studio). ArtAchieve belongs to the third category and is distinguished within that group primarily by its international folk-art content framing. Families comparing across categories should recognize that the choice among these shapes often matters more than the choice within any one of them, a family that wants books on the shelf is looking at Artistic Pursuits; a family that wants video demonstration is looking at ArtAchieve or Masterpiece Society; a family that wants a single-medium approach is looking at Chalk Pastel. The review above is written for families who have already decided they want a video-based, project-driven art curriculum and are choosing among the options in that shape. Prices and edition information verified April 2026.