‘How-To-Draw’ Books

Like Lego instructions, books showing how to draw different things are visual and sequential. They are easy to follow, even if verbal skills or reading skills are not a strength for your child.

How to Start

At a preschool level, typical kids can start to copy shapes.  For our kids, these milestones come at vastly different times, but just because it may not happen in preschool, doesn’t mean we stop trying. For Mikey, by elementary school he could draw shapes proficiently. In the summer between his fourth and fifth grade year, he still enjoyed doing it, so we sometimes practiced.

Once your child can draw the individual shapes, you can move on to simple drawings based off the shapes. We tried the sun.  You can also choose things that are, by their nature, hard to mess up…like clouds. They all look slightly different and nothing is symmetrical – so they usually come out looking…like clouds.

The animals come from pages like these. I cut them out of the book so Michael could just do one at a time.  Sometimes, he gets intense about finishing a book once he starts it, so handing him one set of instructions at a time meant he could draw for a bit and then stop before he got frustrated.

If your child likes drawing, these can be fun. You can even make simple instructions yourself for how to draw things like a smiley face or a simple house…even if, like me, you are not artistic in any way. Three or four steps are a great starting point.  You can sit alongside your child and model.

Have fun getting creative!