Kids Art: Exploring Lines and Designs

ByChristie Burnett

Yesterday I offered Immy some paper and suggested that she do some drawing at the easel with her oil pastel. Lately her drawings have been all about fairies and angels but instead this time she started drawing lines and shapes, many that were symmetrical.  And instead of calling them drawings, when she started telling me about each one she called it her ‘design.’

She produced design after design. Some featured straight lines…

… and others mainly soft, curved lines…

… then some were combinations of both. We talked a lot about lines and shapes.

Talking about Line with Children

  • Lines can be thick or thin, smooth or rough, short or long, light or dark.
  • A line is a path.
  • A line can define a shape.A shape can be geometric (circle, square) or free form (organic, natural objects).
  • Repeated lines can create texture or value (value is the degree of light or dark).

What have your children been drawing lately?

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Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.

4 Comments

  1. Lovely. What a treat to see what your little one is coming up with! grace

  2. Great post Christie!
    Our kiddos have been drawing lots lately too. Our 2.5 yr old is enjoying drawing circles and faces. She also enjoys drawing lines and shapes and then colouring them in. As our munchkins get a bit older, I begin to show them some great big beautiful books of prints by famous artists. I was thinking about how we began doing this about 3 years ago now. My three older kids were then 7,6 and 4. I showed them a van Gogh book and then we just took time to sketch one work using crayons. So much fun looking back at the pictures from then. I thought of that not long ago and so went searching for the post I had written on it. Here it is: http://homeschoolingmamalusi.blogspot.com/2009/02/homeschooling-stuff-and-one-set-of-cool.html
    Hope you are feeling much better now. Did you get my last email? Just wanted to thank you once again for the goodies!
    Cheers,
    Lusi x

  3. How interesting… not drawings – designs! We’re getting lots of fairies, ladybirds, snails, skyscrapers, houses, diggers, cats… the usual!

  4. My son isn’t really into drawing, but lately he’s started making grids (both drawing and making out of sticks, toothpicks, etc). He calls these grids “calendars”. So he has his robot calendar, space exploration calendar, etc. He usually marks each cell with a sticker or a dot or something. So now I help him write the numbers in and discuss how many days are in each of his calendars.

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