3D Drawings

“Can we paint?”
“yeah! can we paint!!??”

It was an hour before dinner, I really didn’t want to get out the paints. I needed an activity that was more exciting than painting for the big kids, was doable for my four year, was quick to set up, and wouldn’t make a huge mess.

For a moment I thought this was an impossible predicament, but then I remembered an activity that I did when I was at school. A quick goodgle and some printed sheets later and my kids were all busy making 3D drawings!

To make a 3D drawing you’ll need:

• Shape/box templates printed onto sturdy paper
• Scissors
• Glue or tape
• A rule (optional but it helps with folding)
• Markers, pencils or crayons

To make your drawings 3D you need to do them on a foldable shape template. A quick search revealed that there are loads of free printable shape and box templates available. We chose cubes and pyramids as they looked easy to cut and fold.

We used this one for the cubes, and this one for the pyramids.

Once you’ve cut out the shape template (my four year old needed help with this part) you are ready to start drawing. Draw on the back of the cut out template so none of the printed lines show when you fold it.

Once your template is covered with colour then it is time to fold it into a 3D shape.

We used the ruler and the back of the scissors to score along each of the fold lines to make it much easier to fold the templates into shape. Then a little glue or tape on each tab and youre drawings are now 3D!

We discovered that if you draw patterns and shapes across the whoel width or length of the flat shape it is interesting to see how they change and move around the 3D shape when it is folded.

These 3D drawings were loads of fun and it was a really low mess activity, perfect for the pre-dinner ‘I’m boreds’. Plus now my four year old knows how many sides a cube has and what a pyramid looks like! I love it when art and maths combine!

Here’s another easy, low mess, art and maths activity – Graph Paper Drawing.