Friday, January 18, 2019

Drawing Lessons, Kindergarten 101


This, of course, is an absolutely wonderful kindergarten drawing of a happy little girl holding hands with her smiling teacher.  But how many times have you looked at a child's drawing and asked yourself, "What is this?!"  

There are many resources which help children to develop their ability to draw something.  In recent years, directed drawing has become a popular kind of lesson.  There are numerous youtube videos where real artists teach students to draw popular animals, historical figures, and characters from children's literature.  Here is a screenshot from one such video showing how to illustrate Martin Luther King Jr.:
You can have your students follow along as a whole class
watching the smart board and drawing on whiteboards and/or paper
OR in centers using tablets or laptops.

You can also download free and inexpensive directed drawing resources from Teachers Pay Teachers which students can use in centers.  In fact, my most popular, favorite center for many, many years was my drawing center. Here is how it worked:

I purchased one of the many step-by-step drawing books like this one available on Amazon right now:




Here's the link, if you want to buy it.


Then, I cut off the bottom half of each page and laminated the tops to be task cards like this:
Next, I created a paper like this one below which is your freebie download:


As a class, the children learned how to work in the drawing center. I took out one drawing task card and projected it on the smart board side-by-side with an "I can draw a _____" paper.  Each child had her own copy of the drawing paper. Students wrote their names and copied the name of what they were drawing at the tops of their papers.  Then, we had to learn what each of the symbols represented: a pencil, a crayon, a colored pencil and a marker. While I demonstrated on the smart board, everyone took out a pencil and followed the step-by-step directions to create the drawing projected on the task card. Then, they repeated the same steps to create the drawing with the other tools (crayon, colored pencil, and marker.) 

After several practice sessions, the kindergartners were ready to use the task cards and drawing papers independently in the drawing center.  My centers were typically 15 minutes in length and most students would complete a couple of drawing lessons each time they visited the drawing center.

I have a few other favorite lessons for teaching children to draw more representationally so please look forward to the next blog posts for other ideas for drawing lessons!







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