Home-schooled kids shouldn't miss out on learning about the fine arts just because they don't attend a traditional school.

That's where Master's Academy of Fine Arts fits in.

The fine-arts school, which began in 1991 in Stone Mountain and now has 20 locations, including Woodstock, is designed to stimulate the creative side of home-schooled students from ages 3 to 18.

The school offers instruction in art, drama, music and history taught as a unit within different time periods: Ancient (creation to 400 A.D.), Medieval-Renaissance (400 A.D. to 1600), Baroque (1600 to 1750), Classical (1750 to 1830), Romantic (1830 to 1900) and Modern (1900 to 2000).

"The real key for me is all kids need to have a creative outlet," said Regional Director Murielle Wasby of Marietta, who helped start the Woodstock location in 2001 and the Marietta location in 1996. "If we can help with that endeavor, especially in the home-school community, we want to do that. Our mission is to be able to help these kids discover the creative gifts God has given them and use these gifts to glorify God."

The classes also teach students to "think outside of the box," enabling them to become "great creators and thinkers" as they mature, Ms. Wasby said.

The school also helps with classes that are difficult for home-schooling parents to teach at home.

"It's hard to do art, music and drama at home because the parents may not have the necessary skills in this area," she said. "And sometimes it's hard to do music and especially drama by yourself. We've got people with expertise in those areas, and they learn in groups."

Ms. Wasby said fine-arts classes are just as important for home-schoolers as their academic classes.

"It's very important to give kids the chance to use that side of their brain, the creative side," she said. "It affects their academic performance. If they're given a chance to be creative just one day a week, academically they do much better, and test scores go up."

The Woodstock location at Faith Community Church, which opened after the Marietta school was filled to capacity, offers three different programs that meet for 30 sessions each between September and May, said Ms. Wasby, who runs both schools.

Master's Academy offers hour-long art, music, drama and history classes for ages 3 to 11 on Wednesday afternoons. All classes are taught from a specific historical period that changes every year. This year's period is Modern.

At the same time, Masterkey Academy provides more advanced hour-long classes in art, music, drama and art history for kids in seventh through 12th grades on two levels: Track A, which is foundational classes, and Track B, where students can pick and choose the classes they want to take. The art history class is taught according to the time period Master's Academy is exploring, but the other classes aren't.

"Masterkey takes them to a different level," Ms. Wasby said. "We're looking at developing their skills in art, music and drama without having the historical tie. It's skill-based. The art history is the only one that's historically connected."

On Tuesdays, Cordis Academy offers academic classes in history, science and literature/composition that are taught within the same historical period as Master's Academy.

"We take the unit-study approach," Ms. Wasby said. "The subjects are all related to one another. They're not reading ancient literature while studying modern history."

The school also offers extra enrichment options on Wednesday mornings with its Master's Institute, which includes classes in dance and fencing, private music lessons and drama and art clubs. These classes also are open to kids not enrolled in any Master's Academy programs.

"With Cordis, we give them homework for the rest of the week so their parents don't have to come up with it," Ms. Wasby said. "They have projects as homework assignments instead of 'Read your textbook and answer these questions.' It's very hands-on. I believe that's the way children learn, and they'll remember."

In fact, most of the classes are taught in a more creative way to help the students better grasp the concepts they're learning, she said.

"In history, it's living history so the teachers become the historical figures and teach that way," she said. "The kids never know what's going to happen when they walk in. It's always a surprise."

The students also get involved in illustrating the concepts they're being taught.

"In history the other day, they were talking about segregation, and we had the pink people and the blue people," Ms. Wasby said. "The pink people could do certain things that the blue people couldn't. They're going to remember that instead of reading it in a book."

In the art classes, teachers use "real canvas, real paint brushes and real paint" to teach their students step by step how to paint like the great artists, Ms. Wasby said.

"By the end, they've produced artwork that is frameable," she said.

The teachers also expose them to all forms of media such as watercolors, sculpture, pencil drawing, charcoal, pastels and pottery.

In music, students learn about the composers of the time period and listen to their compositions, play rhythm instruments as well as bells and recorders and study basic music theory.

The students in drama classes study the theater of the era -- "what we can share with them; some of it was horrible," Ms. Wasby said -- and use drama games to learn theater skills.

At the end of the year, the school has a big performance day, where the students perform a musical piece and a dramatic piece, and artwork they've created is displayed on the walls.

"There's always a theme," Ms. Wasby said. "This year is a USO show."

The academy has 11 teachers and eight aides instructing 115 students this year, she said.

"We only allow 14 students in a class," she said. "The teacher's aides stay with the class so they're very well-monitored. The teachers teach, and the aides take them from class to class."

Many students will go through the six-year rotation of classes a second time, according to Ms. Wasby.

"If they start when they're 3 or 4 or 5, some go through a second rotation because they were so young, they didn't remember (the earlier classes)," she said. "And it's on a different level then."

She added the home-schoolers really seem to enjoy the classes.

"A lot of kids keep coming back," she said. "They love it."

dharris@cherokeetribune.com

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