There are quite a lot of parents who are reluctant to let their children spend too much time on things like drawing, which they consider a very basic and lower form of intellectual activity compared to scientific experiments, mathematical brain teasers, or if it has to be arts, then why not play a musical instrument or do some play acting; they will argue.

Fortunately, there are quite a number of parents who realize the value of drawing in making small children communicate better than with words, and how drawing develops and improves a child’s intellect by making him think, analyze situations, express feelings and communicate besides learning to be creative and innovative from very young days. Drawing is much more than connecting lines, curves and shapes. It is the best brain builder during the initial and formative years of a child.

Drawing costs very little for the few tools required like a drawing book, pencil and eraser, and some coloring material of one’s choice from crayons, pencil colors, water colors etc. A child who has had very early exposure to drawing will take to other arts and sciences like reading, writing, music, mathematics etc. much more easily than those who had no exposure.

Although drawing is not supposed to be concerned with lengths, square areas or cubic capacities as in mathematics, an artist calculates all these aspects mentally in seconds in bringing out an image that is drawn to a realistic scale and proportions. Generally a child takes to drawing as easily as a duckling takes to water; but try to make it as interesting as possible for him by initially buying a few books with drawing and painting exercises before advancing to creative drawings of his own. Initial drawing exercise may comprise of drawing different shapes, drawing the same shape in different proportions, combining or overlapping shapes to make patterns, painting, by taking care to keep within each image’s boundaries etc.

When your home-schooled kid is getting a little older, encourage him to make and send greeting cards to family members and friends. He can gradually try his hand at crafts like making a few things, starting from some very simple things like his own franking stamp or other designs using cut-outs of vegetables, face/finger painting using some easily washable inks or paints, making face masks preferably of animals; starting with flat types and graduating to embossed or three dimensional ones. Making objects using children’s clay boxes is another idea. You can try the internet for more variety of interesting art programs for your child.

Older children can try their hands at some real adult stuff like embroidery, knitting, making dolls, crochet, sewing; and paper making to silk screen printing that also call for a lot of creativity. You cannot run short of ideas with plenty of “How to..” type books being available with any of children’s books seller.

Children relish working with pavement chalk and you could get them to decorate some parts of your garden. To make it more competitive and interesting for the kids, you can pass this idea to parents of other small children in you neighborhood and organize a competition with good prizes for the first three places. You can give your home-schooling children an introduction to some of the all time greats of artists and painters, and show them some of their most famous works from the internet.

You can assign them projects to find as many works of each great, which is sure to be very inspirational and motivate your children to strive to put out better quality works of art. If these lessons go deep into their hearts and minds, they will learn to identify the artist by studying a given image.

For additional information and help, you may try the following website among others:
http://school.familyeducation.com/visual-and-performing-arts/parents-and-teacher/38477.html

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