Teaching Your Child How to Draw a Person

My favorite fine motor activity of the ABCJesusLovesMe Preschool Curriculum is “Drawing My Family.” The activity occurs four times in the 3, 4, and 5 Year Curricula. Keeping the drawings in a preschool notebook shows the growth and progress in the child’s drawings.

But, if you child isn’t used to drawing people, this task can be daunting.

In the Lesson Plans for Week 1, I suggest demonstrating for your child how to draw your family using simple shapes. Taking this a step further, Becky shared an idea of using cut out shapes on the ABC Jesus Loves Me Facebook Group.

Using all this information, let me show you how I led our 3 1/2 year old son from a blank piece of paper to a drawing of a person!

We began by sitting on the floor with shape flashcards in front of us. We reviewed what each shape was. Then I told Peanut to tell me which shape was the same as my head. He immediately said circle. I asked him to give me the circle card. I traced the circle on the flashcard and then traced the circle of my head.

Next we moved to the body. I outlined a rectangular shape from my shoulders down to my waist. While he struggles with the name of a rectangle (all of my children have), he knew which flashcard was the same. Following the same procedure we did the arms and legs (rectangles).

Prior to this, while he was coloring a worksheet, I roughly cut out of construction paper six varying sized heads, bodies, legs, and arms. We returned to the desk where I again traced my head with my finger and asked him to pick up the shape that was the same as my head. He immediately noticed that the circles were different shapes. I asked him which member of the family he wanted to begin with. He chose Daddy so we discussed which circle would best represent Daddy. Then he chose the body, arms and legs. After gluing them on the sheet of paper, he moved to other members of the family, gluing each of them down. He wanted to add facial features and clothing to the people. We talked about the shapes of our facial features but I said we would do clothing another time.

Just in this small activity, he worked on fine motor skills, shapes, and sorting!

The next day we reviewed the process. Then I demonstrated how to draw a body using the two shapes. With a pencil in his hand, he got a chance. This is what he came up with.

Not bad for a 3 1/2 year old for the first time. He would have added other features but I wanted to focus on the main shapes this time.

Continue to help the child see shapes in objects. Once the child is able
to see the individual shapes, he or she will be able to draw more objects and add more features. I am excited to see how his next drawing will be!

And because I take pictures of the kids’ artwork to save, you can see Bubs’ and Sweet Peas’ “My Family” Drawings from a few years back.