The Drawing Cent​er in my TAB Classroom

The Drawing center was the first center I introduced in my new TAB- choice based art classroom.

The Drawing center has baskets with a number of different writing materials in each one. Each one is clearly labelled. So far I have...

1. Thick washable markers
2. Thin washable markers
3. Permanent colored markers (sharpies and others)
4. Black sharpies in regular and extra fine
5. Gel pens
6. ​Colored pencils
7. Oil pastels
8. Pens & pencils
9. Creamy crayons (That I found in a local store)
10. Graphite and value pencils
11. (I have watercolor pencils and chalk put away for later in the year)
    
    

I also have a box with various templates and rulers and a box with texture plates.  I've recently added some stencils that I had at home as well.

I have a bunch of copy paper available for them to use whenever they need and some other interesting papers like large lines index cards and graph paper. (which so far they've showed no interest in).

I also have 2 boxes of reference pictures  for them to use. 

The first box has pictures that I've been collecting over the past few years. Colored pictures of fish, birds, landscapes, animals, butterflies, trees etc that I've used as reference materials over the past few years and are available for them to use in any of the centers.

Another box right next to it (not shown here) has newer materials like how to draw sheets, patterns, flower images etc. I  laminated these newer ones as they get a lot of abuse.

The posters you see below that are pasted on the window are the different lines that are available for them to see what their drawing materials can do. I have a tray that has the copy paper and other papers available for them to take to draw.

For an introduction the this center the children each got a sheet as seen below.

In each box was the name of one of the drawing tools and the children had to draw something in each box with that drawing tool to get an idea of what each drawing tool feels and looks like.

How it's been working....

It's now about 3-4 months into the year and my goal for the drawing center has been to get the children to actually use the reference pictures and how to's to get them away from the standard "coloring"  of heart making and rainbows that is so common with little girls. ( I teach in an all girls school)

 I am finding that the first grades are are using the stencils a lot to color in some of the larger pictures and even though previously I would not have liked it feeling that it was not creative enough..I now see that its' fine for a period and they are getting creative on how to finish them up after they finish tracing the stencils.

I am also getting ready to take them a step further with their stencil using as I got some great ideas from a teacher on the Facebook group. (I will post pictures when ready to show you poster I'm making for it)

There are children that are doing some real drawing as seen below are a few castle pictures since one girl decided she wanted to make a castle which encouraged some other kids to join.

I gave them some castle pictures for reference and large papers to work as opposed to small copy size pictures.

Here are 4 pictures from first grades who were attempting to draw pictures using some of the how to's that are available.

I also have pictures of different kinds of houses which encouraged this second grader to make this elaborate house drawing.

This student below drew her house or castle, found a how to on cat pictures to add to her picture, drew, colored, cut out and added there girl with a gold paper fastener to her picture.

Towards the end of the year a number of my second graders got more interested in drawing and below are images of one of them that used these plastic animals that I bought for this purpose.

I had this mannequin sitting in the classroom the whole year, when I explained to some of them what it was used for they actually posed them and drew some cool figures.