Making landscaping along with coloring and cutting pictures to put on them has become a favorite of mine. Whenever I (and maybe you too) hear about perspective I automatically think of one point and 2 point and 3 point (is there a 4 and 5 point too?)perspective. It confuses the heck out of me.

Perspective, however is a way of perceiving reality  putting it on your drawing. Most young children are not ready for these complicated lessons on points of perspective.

I have found though,through my research and my experience this year, that there are some basic perspective rules  that children from around 5 yrs old can start to learn.

 I began this project with my first graders by having them use perspective lesson 1, the horizon line. They drew the line dividing where they wanted their sky and ground to meet. Here is another post where the children learned about backgrounds and foreground along with landscapes.

They then painted their skies and grounds. Most did typical  blue, but some did make sunset skies.

I always display a variety of skies for them to choose and copy in these cases.

When these backgrounds were dry I told them to create an assortment of objects that they wanted in their pictures like houses, people, trees etc.

This child decided to add a cow to her picture and was getting it ready to cut out.

I also usually try to have pictures for them to copy from. ( I have been adding to my files so the children will have lots of reference pictures to use in much of their artwork)

The second perspective rule that have to keep in mind is that the paper is basically divided into 3.The items that are on the bottom are things that are closer to us and the higher up the page they are, the further away they are.

The third perspective rule is that objects need to be made smaller as they go higher up on the page, which makes them further away

This is not always so easy as sometimes larger things are further back.

The concept of a sky being in back of the objects is quite a new one for them to wrap their heads around and I sometimes take them to the window to show them the buildings outside and how they are surrounded by sky.

I also have to help them see that all objects need to be placed on ground if they don’t want their objects to look like they are floating in the sky.

All of the objects were drawn on white paper and then cut and pasted to their backgrounds.

Even the fence below that was painstakingly cut out.

They are starting to get the concepts but, I’m sure we will need lots of similar exercises until it becomes second nature.