Tuesdays are our drawing day. We have drawing journals and each Tuesday we sit down and draw in them in the afternoon. At some point yesterday, during play, my oldest daughter wanted to copy something, so I introduced tracing at the window. She enjoyed the concept of tracing so much that I printed off some simple images to trace for our drawing time today.
It was a sunny day so the images showed up very well through regular computer paper. I encouraged colored pencils, but they preferred markers. The papers were simply taped to the window.
The act of tracing encourages eye hand coordination and concentration. My daughters worked on their images and once they were traced, they were removed from the window to color at the table.
Both of my daughters were quite proud of their tracings. It was fun to separate the papers and unveil the work.
My oldest daughter enjoyed working on some more elaborate drawings.
I'm sure we will do this again sometime, and now that they've been introduced to the method, they can trace whenever they need or want to.
3 comments:
Excellent idea, so simple that I didn't think of it! :-)
Drawing Day sounds like so much fun. What were some of your initial ideas when your girls were just toddlers? I am really becoming at a loss for activities for my 28month old and could use some inspiration for drawing/art day.
I always try to tie our crafts into the season. We try to create something representing the season or use something from nature for the craft/art.. When they bring in something from outside try to use it in some way (painting with pinecones or paint a pinecone, rocks, glueing leaves collage.) Drawing day has always been separate for us-we have craft day and drawing day. Drawing can encompass tracing (hands, foot, whole body, objects) it can be on small paper or large paper. It can be with different utensils (crayons, markers, chalk). For us it worked best just to have drawing day with a drawing journal and my girls just drew what they wanted with whatever utensils they wanted. Painting day is similar. The younger ages (like your daughter) are even more about process than product so many times it is about her experimenting. As long as you are giving your daughter the freedom to draw what she wants there is a great benefit from the parent not directing the creativity and allowing it to come from the child.
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