Drawing For 4 Year Olds

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Teaching a child to draw is mostly a question of observing their progress and offering them new methods of exploration. For the first five years of a child's life, your teaching will be limited to providing space, time, tools, and encouragement.^[1] In later years, you may offer to teach a child new skills, such as drawing from observation, practicing perspectives, and drawing correct proportions. Avoid pushing children to change style or approach, and do not offer criticism or correction. Rather, encourage, observe, and ask open-ended questions that will help a child-artist see and imagine more details and possibilities.

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Make art part of the routine. ^[2] Incorporate art-making into playtime. Make an art-zone if you want to isolate the mess. Tape down paper for them to draw on and spill on, and make a smock out of old clothes. Taping paper on a table can help a small child focus on the motion of drawing, without having to hold down and adjust the drawing paper. Buy chunky crayons and washable markers that are easy to grip.^[3]
- Children will begin their drawing by scribbling. Around 2 years of age, the scribbles will become more controlled and repetitive, and children may begin to grip crayons and markers between their thumb and pointer finger for more control.
- Offer a variety of art materials at this age. Don't focus only on drawing with tools: children can draw by tracing pictures in the sand, or shaping clay and sticking it on the page. Buy washable paints, nontoxic clay, chalk, child-safe scissors, and many kinds of paper, and store in an easy to access spot.
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Don't teach. Children develop basic motor skills with every scribble. They also develop creativity, invention, and self-expression. A child this young needs no instructions, only appreciation. Sit with children when they draw, talk with them about their art, but do not attempt to teach.^[4]
- Avoid the impulse to correct. Small children may paint purple grass, floating people, and babies the size of houses. If you correct them you will damage their self-confidence and interrupt their natural learning progress.
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Make observations. Rather than praising or correcting a child's art, observe it. Comment on the process, not the product. While the child draws, say "look at all the circles you are making! Some small circles are inside the big circles" or "I see you are using orange and green crayons now." Say what you like about a drawing: "that big sun makes me think of a day at the beach!" or "I like how all the trees have different colored leaves."^[5]
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Ask open-ended questions. Avoid asking "what is it?" when presented with a drawing. Instead, ask "can you tell me about your drawing?" If a child is excited to talk about their drawing, ask more questions. A child may begin to add more details when you ask questions. When a child is drawing representational work, they will often imagine a story that goes with the work. Asking them to tell you more details of their story will encourage them to draw more details.^[6]
- If you ask "what does the girl smell," for example, they are more likely to add a nose. If you ask "is the dog lonely at night?" they may draw more animals. This kind of exchange encourages imagination, story-telling abilities, and drawing skills.^[7]
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Make art part of emotional processing. If a child is experiencing a strong emotion, offer them paper and markers, or some clay. If a child is having a tantrum, suggest they make an angry picture. If they are sad, a sad one. Art can help children process intense emotions that may be too complex for them to put in words. Giving a child a creative activity over which they have sovereignty can help them gain a sense of control.^[8]
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Affirm pre-writing. Around 2 ½ to 3 ½ years of age, children will begin drawing squiggles meant to represent words. These drawings are a child's first steps toward writing. As they grow, the squiggles will become more complex. A child may begin to vary short and long squiggles or draw letter-like shapes mixed up with real letters. These drawings are an exciting sign that a child understands that words can be written to communicate meaning.^[9]
- Children are likely to tell you that certain squiggles "mean" something, or ask you to read them aloud. Affirm the meaning of the squiggles that are read to you, and ask for help reading the others.
- Let children use the texts they produce. Bring them to the post office to mail their "letters" (with an accompanying note) to relatives, Santa, or themselves.
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Display and save their drawings. Putting children's art up is a way of letting them know their work is interesting and important. Rather than praising every individual drawing, display it. You do not have to put up every piece of art: ask each child what they would like displayed, or create a rotating "gallery" that changes weekly or monthly. Keep a portfolio of each child's drawings so they can observe their process.
- It is more important that a child's practice is affirmed than that their art products are displayed. Displaying final products is no replacement for encouraging the development of their drawing.^[10] ^[11]
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Teach your child to practice observation. ^[12] Around the age of 5, you can start teaching observational drawing. This involves teaching children how to draw from the appearance of things, rather than their knowledge or imagination of them. To begin training them in observation, teach them to think of their drawings as practice. Say you are learning a new kind of drawing that takes lots of practice, and that they can practice as much as they want.^[13]
- Provide pencils and multiple pieces of paper, and gently discourage eraser use. Say they can start a drawing as many times as they want, and erase false lines when they are done.
- Do not force observational drawing on a child. Pushing a child to a new stage of drawing might discourage or stunt their learning.
- Affirm other kinds of drawings as well: storytelling and imagination based drawings, abstract or emotional drawings.^[14]
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Train them to draw new objects. Around age 5 or 6, children develop schema, or ways of drawing things. Instead of teaching them to observe things they have "already learned" how to draw, like houses, a pet, or trees, let them pick something they have never drawn before. This will prevent them from reverting to learned habits, but will not frustrate them by requiring them to "unlearn" something they feel they have mastered.^[15]
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Practice observing shapes. Explain that the child will be drawing an object from one side. Have the child sit where they will be when they draw, and trace your finger around the edges of the object as they are visible to the child. Then, have the child trace the edges. Next, ask the child to trace the shape in the air. They can do this with their finger and with their pencil.^[16]
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Draw without looking down. ^[17] Encourage children to draw with their eyes on the object they are drawing. Try putting a square of paper on their pencil, above the spot they grip, so that they cannot see the line they make. Have them draw practice lines first. Have them practice drawing each part of the shape separately.
- After they have practiced the lines, let them draw the whole shape. Keep the page of practice lines nearby for further practice or reference.^[18]
- Have children practice drawing without ever looking down.
- Have children draw and only look down when they have finished drawing a line. Let them check on their progress, but encourage them to look down as little as possible.
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Coach by observing and questioning. As you would for a younger child, ask open-ended questions, but ask them about what they see rather than what they imagine. Ask "which part of the object is lighter? Which is darker?" "where does the line bend?" Compliment lines and angles they depicted correctly, and encourage them to find more details.^[19]
- Say "I see you drew a strong curving stem for the flower, and you shaded a texture into the dirt. Now, do you see any smaller parts at the end of the stem? Where do they start and stop?"
- Avoid showing your own drawings of an object, or drawing on a child's paper. Children are hardwired to learn by imitation, but this is not helpful for learning drawing.
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Focus on one medium at a time. Offer children the chance to practice with different media. Children between 5-8 may be open to drawing with pencils, which will allow them to focus on shading and contour. Show children different materials and allow them to experiment. Suggest phases: first we will draw with a pencil, then with watercolors.
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Make a book. Children between 5 and 8 enjoy making up stories to go with their drawings. They may be interested in drawing sequences to tell a longer story. Encourage children to draw and write short books. Help them bind the books together with staples or needle and thread. Once the book has been "published," put it on the bookshelf with the rest of their books.

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Focus on spatial issues. Pre-teen children will be especially interested in depicting perspective, foreshortening, and other spatial information. They will begin to draw horizon lines, overlapping objects, and exacting detail. Assign them spatial sequences, such as drawing an object from three different angles. Arrange neutral-colored geometric shapes near one another so they can practice shading.^[20]
- Let them arrange objects in piles and draw them.
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Teach proportion through portraiture. Basic anatomical proportion is one of the hardest things to learn. People tend to see the head as bigger than it is, the eyes as being bigger and higher in the face. Teach children basic anatomical proportions of the face, then give them mirrors and have them draw themselves. Let them take turns posing for one another, and have them draw quick sketches.
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Anticipate the crisis of confidence. ^[21] Around age 9, children have a strong desire to draw realistically. They may become frustrated by drawings that do not look "right." They may decide they are a bad artist. To head off this crisis of confidence, make it clear to them that drawing is a skill that takes practice. Tell them that when they are frustrated it is because they are moving up a level. If they think they are a bad artist, that is because they have learned to see things they couldn't see before.
- Children around age 11 may wish to give up on drawing. Teaching them age-appropriate skills and encouraging them to try new methods will help them stay motivated.
- Enlarge the child's concept of art. One way to head off the decline of a child's artistic practice is to teach them other forms. Drawing abstractions, comics, or design can rekindle the confidence of a child who is stuck on realism.
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Set them observation challenges. Children who have been observing shapes and attempting to draw realistically for a while are ready to unlearn some of the things they have learned, so long as they are not shamed for wrong answers. Bring them to a tree, or pass around pieces of wood, and explain that they are going to observe all the colors in the bark. Set them the challenge of drawing a tree without using the color brown, but rather by blending different colored markers to get a real woody color.

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How can I start teaching my child to draw?

Kelly Medford is an American painter based in Rome, Italy. She studied classical painting, drawing and printmaking both in the U.S. and in Italy. She works primarily en plein air on the streets of Rome, and also travels for private international collectors on commission. She founded Sketching Rome Tours in 2012 where she teaches sketchbook journaling to visitors of Rome. Kelly is a graduate of the Florence Academy of Art.

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Always monitor children when they may be working with sharp objects.

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If you want to teach 15 month to 5 year old kids how to draw, ask them open-ended questions about their drawings that encourage them to draw more details. Once they are 5 to 8 years old, teach them to draw objects by looking at them instead of just imagining them. Finally, teach 9 to 11 year old's spatial awareness and anatomical proportions by having them draw portraits. For more information on providing constructive feedback and guidance, keep reading!

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