Technical Sketching for Middle Schoolers

I have to admit that when I received this in the mail from Insight Technical Education, I was a little overwhelmed with the holidays and moving, so I just put it aside for awhile.  My expectations were very vague because I had no idea what this product would entail.  Well, I have to tell you that I am very impressed with the product and the skills that it teaches in a very self-directed environment!

I received Advanced Complete-A-Sketch which teaches technical sketching, introduces drafting concepts, explore orthographic and isometric sketching, includes 3D Models to build and provides independent learning opportunities.  It is a CD Rom, so you can print out whatever you want as many times as you want.  The sketches are a little like advanced dot-to-dot projects where the student can used a straight edge, compass and other simple drafting tools to complete the sketch.  This is very much geared towards boys (helicopters, planes, tanks, etc.), and I believe my son will gain a great deal of ability from these pages.  This program runs $28 and includes a great variety of different projects.  And when they get better, they can do the same project again with more skill that they have acquired.  There is also bonus materials to enhance the learning acquired with the program.  They provide blank graph papers in order for you student to create their own projects, too.

The company is called Insight Technical Education and all their products are self-teaching, self-paced and great for all learning styles.  They have a number of different products including Accounting, Drafting, Introduction to CAD, Technical Sketching and Vision-Dexterity-Focus.  They range in age from Elementary to High School levels.

They also offer package deals, manual drafting kits and CAD software(TurboCAD), which will give the student a good foundation for going on to use other CAD programs.

If you have a child that is leaning more towards the technical end of the spectrum, I believe these products may be exactly the type of art you may be looking for and didn't even know it.   These products were developed to help their own children and now they have made them available for others to benefit from.

Visit their site and you will get an idea of how their program works!  It is a lot of fun to watch your kids complete a sketch that they never thought they were capable of and acquire skills that will aid them in their future.