Painting Time!

I believe, giving drawing lesson for your kid could be a task you can do yourself, providing you could spare an hour or so (including setting up and cleaning up afterwards). You really don’t have to be an artist to teach a preschooler. As long as you know your basic colours and basic shapes, and show confidence when putting them on paper, you can teach your child to do it.

At this stage, the benefits we would like our little one to have is to introduce and build on their observation and concentration and skills.

The ideal session would take about 30 minutes for a 3-years old, and about 45 minutes for a 4-years old.

If your child is not too keen on sitting down with a piece of paper and pencil, then try to get a very simple outline drawing for 5-10 minutes first. Then work on introducing colouring activity into the session that will increase session time. Some children, like my boys, do not like working with colour-pencils or crayons, but are curious about paints and brushes and much quicker to cover a sheet of paper, so this was my tool to get my son interested in sitting down.

Pick an object they love like toy car or a simple drawing of a car from a book.

Teach them to observe by asking what does a car have? Wheels. What colour is the wheel? Black. What shape is it? Circle. There is another shape inside the wheel, what is it? A little circle. How many wheels can you see? Two. Are the wheels on the top of the car or on the bottom? On the bottom. Very good! Let’s draw two big circles on the bottom of the paper. And draw a little circle in each. Make sure you also have a paper and pencil with you and draw slowly as you explain so they can see what they are expected to do.

Another silly tip, is to give your child undivided attention and interest during this time, as I have tried doing this while checking emails resulting in frustrated mom and son! Remember not to get frustrated if they don't get it right as we do not want to relate painting with punishment or tedious task.

When you start filling up the shapes with colour, use one colour at a time. Start the lighter colour first, then move on to next colour encouraging your child to fill in all the white spots. Point to the spots you want them to paint, but don't hold to guide their hand. Initially your child might get wriggly before completing the project, do encourage them to sit and finish the work providing that it is still within the 30 minutes time frame. Use the black paint last, with a smaller brush if possible to trace the pencil line, this will liven up any painting.