This past Sunday was the first of a new series of art classes that I am running in my home. One of my objectives with this art class is to put together a solid course for parents on how to teach their children how to do art, including some drawing, EVEN if they are not artists and have no art background.

I am a case in point. I am not an artist and have no art background. However, I do have a degree in Early Childhood education, plus have been running an art camp with my kids for years…plus I love kids and art.

In this class I have about 14 little girls who are all in first grade. I hope to post each week about what we did. There will be some trial and error but, stick with me as I build a curriculum to teach children how to become creative thinkers in art, learn basic drawing skills and hopefully have more ideas about art when we are done,  than drawing hearts and rainbows.

I started out the first class with a tray painting activity. If you want to know how that works see this post on  painting.

I give the children only 4 colors initially and they have to mix the colors to get more colors. They love painting and get very absorbed. I purposely did not start with a drawing exercise since those type of exercises can be a bit tedious for some of the children.

Each week will include lots of fun stuff with other activities that may make them stretch a bit.

After we finished painting I introduced them each to a piece of hard plastic about the size of a regular sheet of paper.(Plexiglas)

I actually learned about the technique of using Plexiglas to help trace real life objects when doing real drawing. I decided to incorporate into our activities and will be using it in different ways.

As we begin to learn some drawing I am going to be teaching the children to see lines and shapes in objects all around them and in pictures and to take away the fear of putting those lines and shapes onto paper.

I gave them some unfinished pictures to begin with that had to be finished.

First I had them put their plastics on top of the sheet, trace the images and finish the unfinished part. they then had to finish the cup and ball and chair on the papers themselves.

I then had them try to copy the pictures onto a separate piece of paper without tracing. The ball was real easy, the cup a bit harder and tjechair was quite difficult for them.

With that we ended our first class. I definitely noticed that some of the children were not happy with the difficult tasks and will be be keeping an eye out for this. I do not want art to be associated with difficulty, only with enjoyment.

Stay tuned.