Drawing Myself

It is easy to forget that just because I’ve done an activity a hundred times while teaching, or the kids have already done it when they were younger, or I think it’s not so ‘new and exciting’ doesn’t mean that my kids see it that way.

It is often the activities we’ve done over and over that our kids enjoy the most. This simple life sized ‘drawing myself’ activity is one of those things I felt we’d done to death, but the kids reminded me how much they still love it.

I used to do this activity every year when I was teaching preschool, and I did it with my girls when they were little, and then my boys when they were preschool aged. All my kids have had a go at this at least once before and I thought we might be done with it, but as soon as I mentioned it they were keen to do it again.

The simple idea of drawing a life sized picture of yourself never gets old.

To do the ‘drawing myself’ activity you’ll need:

• A large sheet of paper, big enough for your child to lie down on.
• A marker, pencil or crayon to draw the outline.
• Markers, crayons, oil pastels, pencils, paints etc to decorate and fill in details
• Scissors

We used a roll of Ikea paper and taped two long pieces together to make a piece of paper big enough to fit my boys.

You’ll need to clear a big space and tape the paper to the floor to stop it slipping around. Then have your child lie down on the paper and draw around their body to make an outline.

There will be lots of giggles and wiggles both while you are drawing around them and after when they get up and see themselves drawn onto the paper.

Now it’s time to decorate!

We chose oil pastels to fill in details and paint to cover large areas. The boys chose paint colours to go with the ideas they had for their clothing, and got to work creating.

I asked my boys to think about what they wanted the paper version of themselves to look like. What sort of hair would they have? What sort of clothes would they wear? What expression would they have on their faces? This was a great way to extend my older kids. For younger kids you could suggest they create the clothing and hairy style they are wearing, or just let them decorate themselves however they like.

Once you are done decorating, let the paint dry and then cut out a life sized drawing of yourself!

My boys loved doing this easy art activity again, even my nine year who has done this activity several times before. More often than not kids love revisiting an activity they have lived in the past, and as they get older they often have new ideas and skills they want to try out. So don’t ditch an idea or an activity just because you’ve done it before. Things don’t have to be brand new to be fun!

Are there any activities that your kids love to do over and over again?

We first shared this drawing myself activity back in 2012 (that’s why you’ll see comments from way back then), and since we had loads of fun doing it again just recently we thought it was time to update and share this post again.