Teaching Kids Art Through Picture Books

Map making is a great skill for kids to develop: As they learn about maps, they are growing:

1. In spatial awareness
2. Their understanding of their place in the world related to everything else
3. Their ability to think in the abstract 
4. Their creative abilities by imagining and drawing their own maps
5. Their fine motor skills as they draw and color maps 

It’s fun to draw maps of places kids are familiar with, like their bedrooms or their street. But it is also important to encourage kids to dream of faraway places they may have never seen and to be able to put those places down on paper. Your child might invent an imaginary place that no one except your child knows about. Your child may draw a treasure map and put lots of fun markers pointing the way.

One of my daughters loved her imaginary country of “Tearaki,” which she drew maps of and populated with her own characters and landmarks. 

When you think about it, all authors who create fictional stories in fictional worlds must have a...

Have you ever noticed those pretty circleish-star shapes with the directions on them in the corner of a flat map? They are called compass roses. They can be very elaborate or simple, but they help orient the reader of the map to which direction places exist in relationship to each other. The concept of direction can be described to kids as the relationship of one object to another. On a flat map or a globe, you can show them north, south, east, and west. The symbol on a map that reminds us of these cardinal directions is called a compass rose.

The first decorated compass rose, according to Wikipedia, was found on a map in 1375 by cartographer Abraham Cresques. 

Help your child draw a beautiful decorated compass rose by reading a story first to introduce them to the idea. 

The Boy Who Loved Maps, by Kari Allen and G. Brian Karas, is a story about an imaginative boy and his friend who worked together to create the perfect map. I love this line from the book: “He made maps of the far...

There I was, sitting in our new 1985 Nissan Sentra, aged 22 and married all of twenty-four hours. I was full of optimism and giddy enthusiasm. Mike was driving, and I held the map. Full of complicated folds and teeny tiny lines, it was a puzzle to figure out. Thankfully, I could do it-because somewhere along the line, I’d learned to read a map. We made it all the way to our North Carolina honeymoon, and thirty-eight years later, I still get excited about road trips with my husband-- and reading maps.

You never know when maps will come in handy on an adventure, so it’s important to help your kids learn how to read them. Besides that, maps can aid kids in developing a mental picture of their place in the world, be it in their home, church, city, or country.

Today’s picture book about maps, Footsteps on the Map, by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Osaka Drachkovska, is interesting because it tells of two kids starting at different places and meeting in the middle.

That’s a fun concep...

My husband and I love to watch Amazing Race, where people travel all over the world completing challenges. We always feel frustrated (along with the competitors!) when they get hopelessly lost on the way to their next destination.  I actually have a terrible sense of direction, but I was taught to read a map, so I feel somewhat more secure when I have one in my hand and find myself wandering around in a new city. 

Is it even important for kids to learn to read maps anymore? Why teach your kids to read maps when they’ll have smart phones with GPS to do it for them?

It’s important for them to know how to read a map because obviously, technology sometimes fails us. We hit a “dead” spot or our phone dies.

If you know how to follow a map, you have a picture of where you are and how to get to your destination.

If you know how to follow a map, you know what the GPS means.

If you know how to follow a map, you can lead others and help them where they need to go.

According to PBS Kids, “T...

As  a follower of Jesus, I love thinking about how to incorporate our faith into everything we do as parents and grandparents. Since children are always watching and catching and observing, it's important to take every opportunity to share the wonderful truths we believe with them. Today in keeping with the "Space" theme,  I wanted to reflect on what a peek into the heavens taught me this month.

As I observed that amazing total solar eclipse--the moon covering the sun completely--for 4 rare minutes in Indianapolis on April 8, I was overwhelmed with awe at our Creator and His creation. One of my takeaways from this experience was that I could actually see the sun gradually disappearing behind the moon, and yet...it was still mostly light outside!

Here the sun is almost covered by the moon--but--look how light is still is!:
On the left below, the sky is still blue but the sun is mostly covered (my camera didn't capture well) and on the right, the sky got dark.
We were struck silent when ...

I am interested in Space...but my husband, kids, and granddaughter are REALLY interested in Space! Since my granddaughter was visiting, it was fun to think about doing some glow in the dark Space art to share with her and other children this past weekend. If you want to take your kids' art out of this world, try this with us. 

You will need scissors and glue and about 30 min. to do this project.

Grab your glow in the dark art supplies. If you don't have any, just grab any art supplies you have. Kids will still get to make a fun space picture, it just won't be glow in the dark. Not sure what I'm talking about? Read what glow in the dark art supplies I recommend here. Here's one more recommended by reader Debbie R: Elmer's Glow in the dark glue!

You'll also need a piece of black or purple paper and a piece of any other color of paper, plus some different sized circles to trace. I used a canning lid, a plastic tub, and a spray can lid. Use a variety of sizes--we are making planets! To ...

Do you remember the first time you saw something glow in the dark? Maybe it was under a black light, or maybe it was a glow stick outside. Maybe you got to see a recent eclipse with the sun's corona shining around the moon. Or maybe it was just seeing myriads of fireflies by the road or in your backyard some summer night.

Whatever it was, seeing things glow in the dark is magical. 

Want to create a special luminous memory for your kids? You may not have these art supplies already at home, but they are worth having because they are the key to creating lots of unusual and fun art.

Start with just one or two art supplies, and you can add more as your kids get excited about creating.  

The first special art supply will do double duty for science experiments and Halloween decorations. It is simply a little black light flashlight. Get a black light  and throw it in the drawer to pull out whenever you need it. My granddaughters and I had a lot of fun with this little light over the weeken...

Solar Eclipse Day is here, and with it comes a great opportunity for kids to read about Space and practice some fun drawing techniques. But as much as you want to help kids to draw and to be creative--and Space is such a fascinating subject--it can be hard to know where to start. 

Start with a good picture book. When you read with a child, you strengthen the adult-child bond, you introduce them to lots of new vocabulary, you model expression and fluent reading, and you bolster reading comprehension. AND you help kids learn, in this case, about a solar eclipse. 

Encourage your kids to love art and reading by pairing drawing an eclipse with a great picture book! Here is one to get you started: 

A Few Beautiful Minutes, by Kate Allen Fox, is filled with beautiful illustrations and poetic writing that is a quiet invitation to wonder at the amazing phenomenon that is an eclipse. 

Do your kids love creating? Here is a quick way for kids to draw a solar eclipse. All you need is a black ...

It's Holy Week! I love sharing the book The Three Trees by Angela Elwell Hunt with kids during Holy Week. It's a great way to get the conversation going about what this week means, and to help your child grow spiritually. 

When you connect kids' learning in different areas, it helps them to remember. I love to tie words from the Bible to the art we are learning about. Drawing connected to reading is a way that you can help form your kids into not only great artists, but great people, using the wisdom of Scripture.

When our kids were growing up, we incorporated the Bible into morning and bedtime routines. We had a passage to read to each of them, which we called their blessing, every night as we tucked them into bed.

Our son's was about trees. Our prayer was that he would grow strong as God helped him make good decisions in life…like a tree gets strong by being planted by streams of water.

Today I'm sharing his blessing verse plus some simple questions to help get your kids drawing ...

Recently, in person student artists created collages of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest. I loved the fresh creativity and the textures of the mixed media project, but realized afterward we could have benefitted from more instruction on how to see the lines and shapes of trees.

Why should kids learn to draw trees?

When drawing kids learn to observe. Drawing is learning to see…and to notice details. As kids observe and draw, they see that objects are made of lines, which make shapes. Learning to see, observe, notice details, and then draw them also increases memory development. Kids are developing eye-hand coordination, visual perception, attention span, emotional expression, problem solving, and imagination--all through drawing trees (and other beautiful things in nature!)

Drawing from nature helps reduce stress and helps kids express themselves. Nature provides inspiration and can increase their awareness of their Creator as they observe creation. 

It's fun to create tree shapes usin...