typical kindergarten kids drawings... | Autism PDD
MJ - that's why I want to post the whole book - so folks, especially those whos kids are still drawing tadpoles or transitional figures, will see the breadth of skills that typical children present and, perhaps, feel better about their own children's seeming lack of artisitic ability. I would say that many of the pictures posted on this thread (excepting Sarah's, which are far beyond anything I've seen for kids this age) are at the high end of what the typical kids (5-6 year olds) in my daughter's class are producing.
[QUOTE=YepperBepper]If we draw faces ....he scribbles all over their eyes??? Scary.[/QUOTE]
Cassidy does this sometimes, she often gets very focused on eyes & will go through her coloring books or magazines & scribble out just the eyes. The first time she did it, it freaked me out. lol
Cassidy never drew tadpole people... she went from nothing to 'detailed'. Not lifelike by any means but 'bodies have details' so to speak so she puts as much as she can cram in, in. lol hands, feet, fingers, toes, belly buttons, eyebrows, etc. Very scribbly, but all there somewhere. & There are usually MANY, MANY fingers & toes. lol
Abigail brought home a book from kindergarten that they class made as a project. Basically, every kid in the class asks a few questions of the book's subject for that week (it was Abbie this week) and then draws a picture of the child.
It was interesting to see the range of drawing abilities that are present in a typical kindergarten class. Everything from fairly good representations of people, including full scenes (trees, clouds, small animals, etc) to simple tadpole drawings. There were more tadpoles than there were more advanced pictures. Most were somewhere in between.
I've read comments from time to time on this board (sometimes in reference to pictures that I have posted from the girls, who draw very well for their age) of parent's describing their child's art as fairly rudimentary. I think it would surprise many of you to see the range of ability in a typical kindergarten class - you might conclude that your child's art isn't much different than other children's their age, if you saw the range of it.
I was thinking of scanning in the pictures because it was pretty interesting. Anyone interested in seeing them?
I definitely would Fred. My son is just starting to draw. Great circles...but oddly, he is also trying to make a 3-d box (blues clues, I think). He almost has it down. He has yet to show any interest in the animal/people drawings. If we draw faces ....he scribbles all over their eyes??? Scary.
My son had the same project in his kinder class, too, fred, and I saw the same range of abilities. One in particular was exceptional...looked like it had been drawn by a much older child. Some were just tadpoles, too. A good many, as you noticed in Abbie's book.
Fred,Your daughters draw beautifully, I have always thought so. I have seen
countless childrens drawings as I have often taught the meet the masters for
all my older childrens art programs. I love art and I love to draw. My sweet
asd son is drawing stick figures, and he has absolutely no interest in art thus
far. My oldest at the same age was drawing vintage WWII airplanes and tanks
(Yes he does have some aspie traits) at the same age. That being said,
drawing is a skill, it can be taught but somehow you have to encourage
them. Your daughters are one step ahead, they have the aptitude and the
desire to create art. This a gift, cherish it and nuture it as you have been
doing.Branden only colors or draws lines. It is not even a scribble, they are just plain old lines. He can now use little crayons instead of the big fat ones. His lines are normally vertical, but every once in a while they are horizontal. How do i break him of that?I know it's not the answer for everyone, but for Cassidy the key to her fine motor delay was when she got glasses. She would scream if you tried to get her to write or color or do anything with her hands & was delayed in fine motor by about a year. She got glasses right after she turned 4 & at her next OT reveiw eval. she was ahead by about a year! It was such a turning point on all things fine motor, it has come full circle to where fine motor is definitely a strength. She's not 'artistic' so much as she just really loves to color and doesn't mind writing anymore (if SHE wants to of course, won't do anything if she doesn't ;)) lol... Anyway, just thought I'd add that in case it might help anyone. We didn't realize she needed glasses and only took her to the Opthamologist because she is so light sensitive and it turns out that she was very far-sighted & had an astigmatism as well... :)Both my boys struggle with drawing but we keep working on it, the pix here are just AMAZING!!!!!My dd's drawing is definitely not anywhere near where here NT peers are. She is in the 1 percentile for fine motor. I actually almost started bawling when I saw the face cutouts the kids made of themselves. Her drawing just really stood out as looking like something a 2 1/2 year old might draw.
4 year old ds draws pretty well. We worked on art skills in aba. We would draw a simple thing and have him copy it. He gets stuck on things though. He likes to draw Billy bot from rollie polie olie a lot right now. He also likes the letter L alot so it ends up on his art quite a bit! He follows the directions during art in preschool and does what they say but there is often many L's on the picture as well as a billy bot. My add son who is 17 absolutely hates drawing and writing and I hate to say it but I could always pick out his papers when they hang them on the wall at parent teacher times whenhe was younger as the messiest.
Ali has never drawn anything on her own- just scribble (which she claims is this or that). In coloring books all she does is scribble, but on three occassions recently I have been able to get her to copy pictures I drew (grapes, bed, & flower) and it was distinguishable. But since then if I ask her to draw those things without copying, she mostly scribbles.
My daughter drawings are funny and still look the same from K. She has the arms where the ears should be, no body but long legs, with big hair. I've been showing her how draw a triangle over legs, so it at least looks like it has a dress on. Yet she can draw mermaids, food, cats but can't get the stick body right.Sam can only draw if he has someone to help break down the image into easy to draw shapes. He doesn't draw for pleasure. I spend time with him showing him how to break the image down into circles and squares, rectangles and triangles. He cannot create a scene without help, can't imagine drawing a house, tree and sun picture. We are working on drawing robots - his spec. interest. He did surprise me last year at his first SL lesson. The teacher asked Sam to draw himself and he did he only human representation drawing I have seen him do, a surprisingly good picture with many details. He has never repeated it.
mama to Sam 8 yrs PDD NOS OCD ODD PPD and Alex 2 yrs
Yes, Fred, I'm definitely interested!Bug isn't all that interested in coloring/drawing. He did a lot of coloring/water colors as a toddler (just scribbling) - but now it doesn't hold his interest.
If I ask him to draw - he writes his name and draws a "friend" (smiley face). Same thing every time.
The girls scribble all over the paper - then call it something (usually a mermaid or a princess castle, LOL). They prefer to use the pink marker.
??? I don't even know how to judge what is normal any more.
Oh, one of my girls draws what looks like a spider - but she calls it a "friend" (copying Bug) - and it has tons of toes - tons. Like 20. Creepy.
Fred,
These are some of the anime drawings Sarah has been into lately...all similar but at least she changes their hair color!
http://s126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/Shelleyr_2007/?actio n=view¤t=pics.flv
Wow, those are awesome drawings!
[QUOTE=mamajot]I'm trying to scan one so I can post it but my scanner automatically saves it to a pdf file and photobucket doesn't want pdf. Hmmm? Cam, Fred, Kristy - any tips?[/QUOTE]
Do you have a digital camera? Can you take a pic of it? I don't even have a scanner anymore, my camera is my scanner lol... :)
Wow that's awesome. Anthony is definitely "age appropriate" in his drawings.
I'm trying to scan one so I can post it but my scanner automatically saves it to a pdf file and photobucket doesn't want pdf. Hmmm? Cam, Fred, Kristy - any tips?
Sarah has been studying her sister's manga books for hours and then doing them. She seems to be doing the same ones though...her sister is helping her side by side which is cool:) She practices for hours!Awesome drawings Shelly, Sarah is quite the little artist. Much better than I am or ever was. It does make me sad however that Christian cannot draw, he cries when he is told to write and draw in school because he just can't and he is embarrassed. He can barely manage stick figures and they are invariably missing a limb or the arms are long and the legs are short. His OT therapist says he has poor body awareness or something like that. He'll be 7 in January. One day I guess ~ hope....
Yes! My ds has very rudimentary drawings - although I have noticed that he is being made to be a little more creative in kindergarten. They had a huge project to do this week where the teacher gave visual instructions and also showed them. But, they had to draw a balloon, then clouds ABOVE the balloon (a white one and a blue one), worms on the ground, two flowers, a ladybug ON the flowers, a black string UNDER the balloon and a butterfly NEXT to the balloon and then decorate the balloon. Ds did EVERYTHING except the black string - and he told me he forgot to do that. But, even though it wasn't any Picasso, I was very impressed at the detail he had. His butterfly wasn't remotely recognizable - but his worms and flowers were cute! It was hard to see the ladybug as he drew the flowers so small.
Anyway, they are going to do an OT evall - I'm anxious to see what happens. But, I would LOVE to see the other drawings. Thanks for offering fred!
In kindergarten Sarah's drawings were pretty simple and not too complete..coloring was still hard for her and writing. Now it is a huge improvement in both areas and she is a little artist now and her hand writing is perfect. I remember looking at all the kids pictures on the wall and vastly different they were...some were very primitive type stick figures and some were pretty darn good...teacher stated it was very common. The problem with Sarah is her pictures are awesome because of her doing the same one 50x and now it looks like a much older child did it..I need to post one one day like a before and after of the same picture..kinda creepy to see the exact pic over and over..like your girls monster house..I havent been able to stop it yet because it looks so good but need too! My son started drawing in kindergarten but it was very, very hard to tell what it was. He sticks to one color now and only draws rockets. Forget about his pictures matching an assignment--it's all rockets. anyone has a site that teaches a kid to draw online or lesson i cant print?Norway
I have read that part of leaving out facial details is part of "face blindness" which is common in autism...Sarah was taught feature by feature from her older sister..she taught her face shapes first..then eyes..nose..mouth..hair..otherwise I am not sure she would do so well. She used to leave noses out and ears:)
I love the statue of liberty drawings!I also think it was quite creative to draw herself holding her picture! Brilliant
Thanks for sharing the drawings, everyone!
ShelleyR and Fred have mentioned repetition -- that the kids have favorites that they draw often. But has anyone else experienced a different drawing quirk -- that some normal details are left out of drawings while some odd details are put in?
When my older son was evaluated, the specialist looked at some of his drawings. One was of a person driving a car. The specialist pointed out how rudimentary and lacking in basic detail the person was. Yet my son had included the odd detail of a student driver symbol on the car (student drivers are required to put a large letter L in the window, stands for Learner).
Anyhow, last night my younger son drew a picture of our family, and I noticed that he left out details like ears and hands and glasses, yet clearly drew one of my husband's t-shirts which has a 3 part comic strip on it!
I tell ya, I'm really starting to wonder about him. He has social delays which we discovered in the last 6 months, but has always had a much better developmental path than his big brother.
my son now started to learn how to color correctly. he still doesnt draw. he only makes circles and a happy face and when he paints its like a mix of all colors he uses and covers every end of the paper.Jason is in preK (he'll go to Kindergarten next year) and draws okay for a 4.5 year old... I think anyway... I guess I haven't seen too many kids his age draw so I am not sure what to expect
His people have a head (larger than it should be though) with a face... including eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hair... then a body with arms and legs coming out of it. Sometimes he draws fingers and shoes but not always. He's JUST starting to draw clothing on his people but its almost always the same type (shirt and shorts) regardless of gender.
He draws people, houses, school buses, cats, dogs, trees, rainbows, sunshines, and recently has been very into pumpkins. He does get a little perseverative with his drawing... he'll sit down and draw 5 school buses in a row
He's still VERY rushed with his coloring in though... he'll get color in the area but isn't very diligent about coloring the entire space in... more just scribbles it in. Not sure what age kids are supposed to do that???
Here are a few examples of some of his recent artwork... its not the best of his batches as thats all up in his art folder in his room and he's sleeping right now...
Cassidy loves to color (coloring book style coloring) but only likes to draw if she's stuck on something...
For instance, she's obsessed with New York/ Statue Of Liberty, so she will ONLY draw the Statue Of Liberty. Here are a couple of those:
& Here's one of my favorites... (from July) She's had a Snowman obsession since before she was 2. She drew the Snowman & then drew herself 'holding' the pic of snowman drawing. I thought that was pretty cool. :)
(I wanted to add that she's not in Kindergarten, but she's 'Kindergarten age'... she missed the cutoff here by a few days... not that it would matter, really! ;))
These drawing are fascinating!!!
Norway... I've definitely noticed Jason including lots of very odd details that most kids his age wouldn't notice but then like you said rushing over details that other kids focus on.
[QUOTE=bullet]I have the drawing skills of an intoxicated gnat. .[/QUOTE] Thanks for the laugh bullet. For some reason that made me feel better about dd's drawings.Bullet - "intoxicated gnat" LOL.
I can't believe the detail in some of these pictures that the kids are doing.
Anthony does stick people. He does add facial features. In the past week, he just started adding a sun to his photos and then a few days later, clouds. He also can spell Mom and Poppa (and his own name) so lately his pictures are of he and I or he and DH and he writes our names on the top. It's so cute.
I have the drawing skills of an intoxicated gnat. Tom draws quite well for his age. We both favour drawing things over and over. I like to draw boxes, profiles of heads and swirly circles. Tom likes to draw the same scene from Button Moon, in the same order, or one happy and one sad person, with a sun above them.Copyright Autism-PDD.net