Learning to draw shapes is a foundational skill for elementary school students in art class. When kids are studying art at school, they need the building blocks that help them grow as young artists. Mastering basic shapes supports this development by strengthening fine motor skills, improving hand-eye coordination, and enabling the creation of more complex designs. If you’re helping children with their creative development, try these lessons built around shapes.
Creative Ways for Young Students to Learn Art Through Shapes
The circles, squares and triangles that children learn to draw are the same shapes that artists throughout history have used to create everything from classical art to modern graphic design. With these lessons, children will develop skills applicable to all types of creativity.
Robot Design Lesson
The goal for this lesson is to combine simple shapes to create fun and imaginative robots. Children can either draw the design using pencils, markers and crayons, or cut out shapes and glue them to paper or cardstock. To explain the concept, you can show how each element of the robot, from the head and body to the arms and legs, is made up of rectangles, circles, triangles and ovals.
Animal Art With Simple Shapes
Drawing animals is one of the most common early art projects young children tackle as they move from scribbling to creating recognizable images. After learning the concept, children can draw animals from simple shapes by analyzing their body shape and outline. For example, cats can be drawn with a circular head, triangular ears and oval body, while fish have an oval body, a triangular tail and circular eyes.
Geometric Cities
A cityscape is full of simple shapes that combine to create a vibrant scene. From the squares and rectangles of skyscrapers to the triangles of roofs and a circle representing the sun, elementary children can start with a basic layout and gradually add to the composition. For this project, children can use markers or crayons on paper, or cut out shapes to create a collage.
Artist-Inspired Shape Lessons
Because artists use shapes to create unique and engaging works, with this lesson you can introduce older elementary students to the artworks of celebrated artists and well-known movements. Ask students to find shapes within a painting, then challenge them to create their own simpler designs using those same forms. Kids benefit from learning about art through the works of Mondrian, Kandinsky and others, as they’ll get to see rectangles, concentric circles and creative shape combinations brought to life.
Try Our Fun Art Lessons for Elementary Children
At Golden Road Arts, we develop a wide range of art lessons for elementary and middle school kids. Browse our tutorials involving shapes and other foundational techniques to help children develop their art skills. Watch free art lessons now.
