Basic Drawing for Children.
Suggestions/Advice
These lessons are for those who want to learn the very basic’s of drawing. We will start with basic shapes, stick figures and go from there.
Children thrive on fun, smiles, encouragement, and a good feeling from what they are being shown, most of the time. Also they feel good if they accomplish something, they want to learn, so they are naturally interested in what they are shown. But for some children their attention span is not very long, for these children breaking lessons down to small bites is a good idea like 15 minutes, or half an hour etc. The thing to do with each child is find out what they like, what interests them and their character, so that you as the teacher can show the child a way to learn that suits the natural character of the child. Every child is different, so please do keep that in mind a you teach each child.
Sometimes when we are teaching a group of children, more than 1, there may be a child that does not want to participate. This is fine. It just shows that this particular child has not discovered the joys of drawing yet.
As the teacher your job is to show the child how to draw, why the child should draw, and how to find much joy in being an artist, especially as a child and how creative drawing is.
A suggestion is to let that other child play in the room while you teach the other child/children how to draw. By making the learning fun, interesting and something of a wonder and achievement to the children, the child that is not participating will get curious and will want to see what is going on (feel a bit left out). When that child comes over to join in the art class please don’t laugh, tease or shame this child.
Welcome the child and show the child where you are all up to and what to do, and soon enough that child will be joining in as well.
When you show the child a Circle you can say, “Circle”, and point to the circle at the same time.
What we want to do is to create an association with the circle in the child’s mind, a connection of the shape on the paper to circles everywhere so that the child will always recognize what a circle is, how useful a circle is (such as it is the simple yet very effective shape of a wheel).
The child should say, “Circle” at the same time as pointing to the shape (and for all other shapes you discover in drawing class or in the lessons).
When the child draws the circle you can say out load something about the circle, like, “Thats it, that is a great first attempt at a circle.”
By the time you have done this a couple of times, the child should have an idea what a circle is.
You can bring up the name “circle” in other lessons as well. All this repetition is useful because it helps the child remember what a circle is.
Up to this point in life the child would have seen many circles, but not associated them with art – so your teaching the child what a circle is, how to create one on paper, and how useful the circle is the child will store all this fun and amazing information in an eager to learn mind.
The person teaching the child is the person who is bringing all these amazing discoveries and wonders to the child and keeping the excitement alive in the child’s mind.