Directed Drawing Lessons

We had an art teacher who came into our classroom every other week and worked on directed drawing lessons with our students. I didn’t know how lucky we were until we lost that grant. She made everything look so easy! Of course, I’m that teacher that draws on her activboard but prefaces it with… “Don’t laugh at my drawing… I’m not the best artist!” I’m creative, but I didn’t get the drawing gene.

But once I found some clip artists who created step by step drawings for their clipart, I was hooked! It makes it so much easier to break it down and then draw it out, and the kids absolutely love doing them.

No-Prep Directed Drawing Lessons

I decided to create two different ways to have students work on these – either during centers or as early finishers and writing activities. Let’s first talk about the no-prep resource.

This resource has the images printed on the page along with an area for students to draw out the image, and then write a few sentences about their image.

These are great because they only focus on one image at a time. Personally, I would introduce these first and let students get a feel for following directions and looking at the final image to sort of gauge where all the lines go.

I’m always amazed at how creative students get with their directed drawings. Same directions, but every student has their own little masterpiece of art!

Low-Prep Directed Drawing activities

I also have a set of directed drawing that works well in your writing/art centers. For these, you print out the cards, laminate, and then bind into a booklet (I use binder clips to keep them all together).

When students go into the center, they can grab a directed drawing booklet, the writing and drawing sheet, and then begin creating a scene with more than one image in their booklet. Then they can write a short story about their image. You can change out the booklets each month so that students are always creating new and fun stories.

Zoo Animals Directed Drawings

My Zoo Animal directed drawings cover:

zebra
walrus
rhino
panda
monkey
lion
hippo
giraffe
elephant
alligator

Winter Directed Drawing Lessons

My Winter lessons include:

winter bird
coat
hot cocoa
gingerbread man
winter hat
mitten
penguin
polar bear
skate
snow globe

Thanksgiving Directed Drawings

My Thanksgiving directed drawings cover:

pumpkin pie
pumpkin
pilgrim
pilgrim hat
ship
cornucopia
turkey
squirrel
scarecrow
owl
leaf
acorn

Halloween Directed Drawing Lessons

My Halloween lessons include:

spider web
cauldron
witch
spider
pumpkin
haunted house
frankenstein
cat
bat
ghost
skeleton
treat bag
witch shoe
witch hat
candy corn

Alphabet Directed Drawings

My alphabet directed drawings cover:

apron, ball, butterfly, cake, cat, donut, dress, elephant, envelope, fish, flower, gift, glue, hamburger, house, icecream, jam, octopus, king, kite, ladybug, lion, milk, mouse, necklace, nest, octogon, orange, pencil, popcorn, princess, quilt, rainbow, robot, snail, sock, desk, tree, umbrella, vase, volcano, watch, watermelon, xray, xylophone, yarn, yoyo, blimp, zoo

These are a little different- I’ve added a mixed up sentence as one of the no-prep activities. So students draw out the image, then they have to unscramble the sentence and write it in the section below.