If you have a young child you may have witnessed them going through a draw your family phase. My daughter just went through this. She spent a good year only drawing images of our family at school. It's fascinating to watch the progression of these drawings. But what about older kids? Are they too old to draw their families?
If you are a teacher of older children, even high school age, this could be an amazing first day art project. Just think of the insight you could gain into your student's lives! Not to mention, it would be a fun, nostalgic project for most kids!
As children get older they develop a fear of drawing people. They assume drawings of people should be realistic and it takes talent to do that. But it doesn't have to be that way. For this exercise tell your older students to think back to when they were very young children and drew their family. They will need to channel their inner child for this project. The images could be stick figures, cartoons or realistic, whatever they feel most comfortable with! There is no right or wrong way to do this!
Make sure you have a drawing of your family done so that you could share a little bit about yourself with them first! This is a great get to know each other activity.
In the second week of class ask them to draw their tribe. This would be who they hang out with. Most high school kids will have a blast drawing their friends. You could also use this as an opportunity to talk about friendships, both the importance of them and ways that students can engage with other kids in the real world to develop more meaningful friendships.
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