Just Add Drawing

Do you have a preschooler who is suddenly interested in drawing or writing and can’t get enough of it?
Do you have a child who is ‘bored’ and needs something a little different to spark their imagination?
Do you have a child who rarely picks up a pen that you’d like to encourage?

Simple… just add drawing.

Adding the element of drawing to a range of different activities is an easy way to make an tried and true activity new and exciting. It’s a great way to support a preschoolers budding interest in representing their ideas and working on drawing and pre-writing skills. It adds an extra element of creativity to an activity. It is a fun, non-threatening way to encourage a child who might not be so interested in art or writing to pick up a pen and give those skills a go. Plus it is really easy to do!

It can be as simple as setting up an invitation to play that includes paper and markers as an option along with a favourite activity.

It’s even easier if you have a drawing basket set up, then all you need to do is pop the basket of drawing supplied next to the blocks or construction set or whatever the activity is and let your child do the rest.

Here are three activities where we easily incorporated drawing.

Tap Tap and Drawing.

A hammering set, or ‘Tap Tap’ as we call it, is a great fine motor and creative activity. My four year old loves hammering the nails into the wooden shapes to make patterns and creations, and just by adding a piece of paper over the top of the cork base board and a container of markers, this activity suddenly became new and exciting!

By adding drawing Noah was able to create more intricate images, and create with this simple toy in new and different ways. By the way… that is an alien with three legs, in case you were wondering!

Building and Drawing.

Adding a large sheet of paper as the base for a construction set is a great way to get kids to look at their buildings in a new way. By adding markers they are able to add new details for their constructions, and their imaginations take off with all kinds of new and interesting ideas.

This can be an especially good way to encourage a child who spends all day building with blocks or Lego and seems uninterested in art, drawing or writing. By bringing the drawing and writing to their favourite activity and allowing them to incorporate it in their own way they can practice drawing and pre-writing skills in a non-threatening way, while still doing something that they love.

Loose Parts and Drawing

Loose parts play is already working lots of small muscles in the hands, and firing up the imagination and creativity, adding drawing to loose parts just sends it all into over drive!

There are so many fun ways to create and extend learning when you can draw extra details, or write captions, or circle patterns. Add some of our free printable facial features for even more creativity and fun!