A kindergarten teacher mentioned that the children in her class always asked how to draw one thing or another. She asked if I would complete a drawing exercise with them. After some thought about a suitable activity, it seemed drawing an object for a four-year-old to replicate didn’t seem right. The fours and fives seem quite happy developing their own generic symbols: rainbows, sky, bee, dog and so on. What could I add by rendering fancier versions?
This age group is starting to use shapes in imagery. A design using a collection of circles, triangles, semi-circles, assembled to form an object, could be good fun to play with, and show that by using similar combinations of shapes you could make pictures of other animals or objects.
I designed a ‘bird’ picture to recreate in the classroom. First, we looked at the geometric shapes made from coloured paper. We named the shapes, and guessed what we could ‘draw’ from rearranging them. Each child was given their own set to assemble and glue down, after the example, and some children added unique details. All up, the bird was a big hit!
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