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Friday, May 19, 2017

New K-2 drawing exercise

I am happy to share our latest drawing exercise for my younger students, as I usually focus on drawing exercises like gesture and contour with my older kids. In our last few days of art this year, we have been doing "1 drawing, 1 minute" practice, which uses the "drawing from memory" part of our brains. I created an "inchies" worksheet a couple of years ago, that we have used for a number of different activities, and it is perfect for this. Here's how it works:
1. I call out a random object, let's say a hamburger. On the inchies sheet, which has 30 square inch boxes, students will draw a hamburger from their memory in a minute or less - usually about 45 seconds.
2. I call out the next object and the students draw it in the second square. I usually choose a theme for each row of five boxes - first row: food, second row: animals, third row: vehicles, etc. This helps me stay on track and not repeat. Sometimes I do funny ones, like their teacher's angry face.
3. The kids get super into this and are really quiet and focused. It makes a perfect time for me to walk around the room, organizing and packing and tidying for end of year. :)
4. Once the 30 boxes are filled, we turn the paper over and do an observation drawing for contrast. I have a big box of stuffed animals and other toys - the students choose one and do an extended observation drawing, say 5-10 minutes, and we discuss how drawing from observation is different than drawing from memory.
5. This perfectly fits in a 45 minute session.
My "inchies" sheet is available here on my Teachers Pay Teachers page - for a buck-fifty you can skip getting out the graph paper and ruler and making one yourself - haha!  Have fun drawing...




 This guy had inchies all over his shirt!








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