How to get your kid drawing every day (and host a home art show)

Somewhere around 7 or 8, a lot of kids decide they're "bad at drawing" and stop. Usually what happened is they compared their drawing to someone else's. The fix isn't talent. It's practice and looking closely, and a family that treats drawing as something everyone does, not something only "artists" do.

Why drawing is worth it

Art supports development. The American Academy of Pediatrics notes that activities involving music and art support cognitive, social-emotional and multisensory skills in young children, and that some boredom allows for creativity.

Drawing helps you remember. In University of Waterloo studies with student participants, people who drew words they needed to remember often recalled more than twice as many as people who wrote the words out. The quality of the drawings didn't seem to matter, and even 4 seconds of drawing helped. Those studies were with young adults, but the message carries: drawing is a way of thinking, not just a way of making pretty pictures.

What schools aim for. The National Core Arts Standards organize art learning around creating, presenting, responding and connecting. The first creating standard is simply to generate and conceptualize artistic ideas, and a later one is to interpret and share artistic work. These quests do both.

Skill 1: Draw the same thing every day for a week

1. Pick one thing you see every day: a plant, a shoe, the cat, a mug.
2. Draw it, looking closely as you go.
3. Draw it again each day for a week.
4. Compare your first and last drawings.

The comparison is the magic. Kids almost always see improvement, and seeing your own progress is the best answer to "I'm bad at drawing."

Looking-closely tips:

• Look more than you draw. Glance at the paper, look back at the object.
• Find the big shapes first. A cat is a circle and an oval before it's whiskers.
• Draw what you see, not what you think it looks like. A mug seen from the side has a curved top, not a flat line.

Skill 2: Make a collage from old magazines

1. Pick a theme, like animals, a color, or "things that make me happy."
2. Cut out pictures that fit it.
3. Arrange them on the paper first.
4. Glue them down.

Arranging before gluing is the real art lesson: moving pieces around, trying big ones in the middle, overlapping. It's composition, the same choice painters make.

Use kid scissors, and a grown-up can help with tricky cuts.

The challenge: a home art show

The mastery goal is to hang a three-piece art show at home and give the family a tour.

1. Pick your three favorite pieces.
2. Write a title card for each one.
3. Hang them on a wall you're allowed to use.
4. Give your family a tour.

Title cards make it official. A title, the date, and one sentence about it: "Sleepy Cat. October. I drew my cat every day for a week, and this one is my favorite."

The tour builds confidence. Explaining your own art out loud is presenting, one of the core arts skills. Ask your child questions like a museum visitor: "How did you make this one? What was hardest? Why did you pick these colors?"

How to talk about kids' art

• Describe, don't just praise. "You used so many blues in the sky" says more than "That's beautiful!" The CDC suggests praising what your child does, and recognizing their accomplishments.
• Ask, don't guess. "Tell me about it" is safer than "Is that a horse?" (It might be a dragon.)
• Don't fix their drawing. Resist the urge to "help" by redrawing a part.
• Draw with them. Your wobbly drawings show that art is for everyone.

Make it everyday

• Keep paper and pencils out, not packed away.
• Carry a small sketchbook for waiting rooms and car rides.
• Rotate the art wall every few weeks so new work gets shown.

Make it a quest

In Family Quests, this is the Doodler skill, the first step on the Arts and Music branch. Practice quests are draw something you see every day for a week and make a collage from old magazines, and the mastery quest is hang a three-piece art show at home and give the family a tour. Start free.

Next: teach your kid rhythm and beat, or read about observing nature.