The Drawing Lesson

With my three boys, our nights are filled with their sports activities and homework. My youngest son Austin loves to draw. He really doesn’t pose much interest in wanting to be an artist when he grows up, so I think he just enjoys spending time with me. In that, he is always asking for a drawing lesson.

When we lived in California, my boys were sent to a Montessori Preschool. And to help with the tuition, I taught art classes to all the children twice a week. Let me just say that ever since then I have the most respect for teachers, it’s not easy. So I would give the children a warm-up at the beginning of each class in that there were two blocks shown on a piece of paper. The first block would have different shapes and lines on it. The second would be empty. The children would have to mimic the same exact placement and shapes as I did in their own block. At first the warm-ups would be simple and as the weeks went on, they had more shapes and even characters. But, the best part is that the children got better and better each week at learning to look at something and having to draw the same thing. It also taught them a lot of patience.

So Austin still loves when I give him these warm-ups and I love to see his improvement.

Above is one we did last night. The X’s going down are the beginning of the columns. The blue circled blocks are mine. The far left column I did all three and you can see how well Austin did. The second X column I only did the fish and he copied me. The other two, he did the first block and I had to do what he did.

Another great thing about this exercise, it makes children really sleepy for bedtime!

Have a great Day! Marnie V.