Drawing is a skill that takes a while to fully master. Here’s how to teach your kids to draw and have fun at the same time.
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How to Teach Your Kids to Draw Anything They Want
1. Understand How an Artist Sees the World
The first step in teaching your kids how to draw starts with yourself. If you can’t understand an artist’s perspective on how to put your vision into a concrete work of art, how will you be able to teach your kids to do so?
How can you gain that perspective?
- Read books on art and design.
- Take some art lessons yourself. This could be in the form of a traditional class, or even just following along an art tutorial online.
- Practice and practice consistently. With more experience, you’ll easily translate visions onto paper, and soon enough convey the skills you learned to your kids.
2. Approach it in an Age-Appropriate Way
You can start art lessons as soon as your child knows how to hold a crayon. How to get started in teaching drawing depends on how old your kids are and at what development stage they’re in.
- Toddlers are just starting to learn their basic shapes and what they represent. You can draw simple figures and explain what they are and have your toddler copy or add into your drawing.
- Preschoolers learn what the shapes mean and what they convey and may use art to tell stories. Gently prod them to tell you what they’re telling you and offer suggestions on what to add to give more life to their art.
- Older children and teenagers start to become more concerned with how realistic their drawings look and will be able to judge if something is not “right”. Validate their worries and introduce ways to add more detail to their art like shadows, highlights, and blending..
3. Make it Fun and Experiment
Kids of all work best if they have fun at the same time. Incorporate art in your daily routine and use the time to bond with each other.
- Experiment with different art materials. It could be traditional tools like crayons and markers on paper, or drawing with chalk on the pavement.
- If you don’t have that artistic bent, walk through some drawing tutorials together. This YouTube channel shares drawing tutorials from both an adult and a kid’s point of view so your kid doesn’t get discouraged if their attempt doesn’t end up as “perfect”-looking.
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4. Ask Open-Ended Questions
Encourage your kid to tell their own stories and ask questions that call for answers beyond the facts.
More importantly, resist the urge to correct them. Correcting how your kids draw can make them more self-inhibited because you’ve placed a template in their mind.
5. Learn and Listen from Each Other
Oftentimes, people learn and teach better when doing it at the same time. Treat art lessons like a mini-workshop where both of you can draw something and give each other feedback on your work.
When you do the learning along with them, you set an example that you’re never too old to learn something new, and that you support them as they go along.
6. Accept that Interests Wax and Wane
Sometimes, your child may not be in the mood to make art. That’s perfectly okay.
Just let them do something else for a while and let them know that if they want to pick it up again, you’ll be right there with them.
7. Process and Improvement Over Results
Encourage your child to practice and practice consistently. Celebrate every small improvement and keep a file of all their earlier works so they could look back and see how far they’ve come since they first started out.
In isolation, they may not see the progress, but when you put them all together, that’s when the magic happens.
Want to learn how to draw together? Here’s a video from Art for Kids Hub that shows you how.
You don’t need to be a great artist to know how to teach your kids to draw, but as long as you’re there to give the encouragement and guidance they need, your kids will be able to reap the benefits of learning how to make art.
How do you teach your kids to learn how to draw? Share your experiences in the comments section below.
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The post How To Teach Kids To Draw To Boost Their Creativity appeared first on DIY Projects Craft Ideas & How To’s for Home Decor with Videos.
