I’ve had Mona Brook’s book in my house, Drawing With Children for the longest time. What Mona teaches is how to teach kids to draw by teaching them the 5 elements of shape there are in the world, like the chart I have above that I made from her book.

As my kids were growing up I was dying to actually go through the book systematically and teach what she teaches adults to do.

Well! I never did it. I procrastinated and was real intimidated. I know it sounds crazy but it’s true. You have to read through all of the introduction and then the directions and get all the materials together. You know what I mean.

Then I got involved in Educational Art and  I decided that this is the perfect motivation for me. I will get together a small group of kids which will give me the incentive to actually do it and then blog about my experiences teaching kids to draw the Monart way.

So that’s what I did and I finally started and believe you me, I was nervous. Don’t ask me why, but I was thinking if its so intimidating to me who has a Masters in Early Childhood Education, plus I have 6 of my own kids then  I wonder about  how nervous other people can be to get started doing this.

It’s not that I was scared of the kids, but to go through the book and to get the steps right etc.And it does take a bit of preparation to get this going.

So I figured that this can also be a help for you guys and gals who want to get involved in teaching their kids this method of drawing. I will help break down the steps for you so when you go back to follow the steps from the book it will be easier.

In the book, Mona has lots of stuff there about  are breaking of our stereotypes of what we’ve thought about drawing in the past.

She has lots of guidelines on how to relax kids and how to relate to them. They’re all important if you’ve never read that stuff. But I’m going to concentrate more on what I actually DO with the kids.

To begin this, I put together this small group of neighborhood children to do an art class (not just drawing but other stuff too) and we started the other day.

I started by talking to them about the differences between symbolic art and realistic art. That they are both valid.

I then hung up the chart I made that I copied from the book and we discussed all of the elements.

We played some games like what items in the room are what shapes.

Continuing with getting familiar and comfortable with these shapes I started by giving the kids copies of the sheets Mona has in her book to copy shapes.

Below are 3 of them (there are about 5 I think)

I made the sheets myself from pictures from the book and told the kids that they did not have to make them exact but they just needed to copy basic shapes.

I encouraged them to say the elements that they were doing as they copied them.  Of course they didn’t though.

I then gave them some free exercises where I had them following instructions such as make 3 dots anywhere on your page. Then make a curving line starting from one of the dots and going off an edge of your paper.

The book has a number of these type of directions for you to give the kids for these exercises.

These are great because you can see the children that have a problem following directions and at the same time while the kids are following directions, all of their pictures come out looking different. I am pretty sure that the 3 pictures below were all from the same directions

That was basically the end of the first lesson and in the next lesson I hope to actually start making  a real picture with them

One of the little girls in my group met me later that day (and mind you the kids also spent alot of time doing beautiful collages) and she said to me “You know we didn’t even do any art today”. So I guess until she sees herself really drawing she won’t consider it art.

To sum up the first lesson:

1. I taught them the 5 elements of shape
2. The copied over many shapes from simple to complicated
3. copied some real images that also had the shapes in them
4. Made free drawings under specific directions

So until next time.

Happy drawing!