Drawing with Children

So I consider myself somewhat capable of teaching drawing to children.  However, Isaac is not one of those children.  I kind of hate teaching him because he is just so negative about it and no matter how patient I am and how long I refrain from throwing in the towel, he is in tears in minutes.  Take this example, this morning he asked me to print a picture of a fox for his nature journal.  I suggested he draw it instead, and the tears started flowing right on cue.  I didn't even try to teach him or anything.  The mere thought of having to draw gives him great anxiety.  What a mess!  He never even doodles, and I think he has some natural talent from what little I've seen.  It makes me sad.  I recommended we do a family drawing lesson on how to draw a fox, because pretty much everyone else would always be excited to have a drawing lesson, most especially Drew.

I'll show the end products before telling you how this group lesson went down.

Mine (top) Drew's (bottom)

Genevieve's (top) Isaac's (bottom)

Hannah's(top) Judah's (bottom)...On Judah's, he told me the eyes for the fox were at the bottom of the page.  He was really trying to follow along for a few minutes.  He made the "chin" as he called it or the muzzle and the ears before he went all Picasso on me.

They all did a great job.  I love them all!  I walked the kids through it step by step and all the kids waited patiently and did their best.  Drew was sitting on one side of me, and he was so diligent about his work and asked for help in positioning when he had trouble.  Isaac was on the other side, and every step was a new thing to get frustrated over and claim inability.  I know he wouldn't do that for another teacher, so I suggested maybe looking for a drawing teacher to help him get past this negative stuff that's blocking his drawing.  To that he just busted into fresh flowing tears.  I think I will look for an art teacher here, but I have little hope since I lost our piano teacher and our German tutor and have yet to find anyone available to replace them.  Sigh.  In the meantime, I'll be sucking it up and teaching him.  Maybe eventually, he'll follow the lead of his siblings and just chill out and draw.  God bless him.

To end on a silly note...Bobby is into silly faces right now and this is his favorite.