Tracing Paper drawing activity for toddlers and preschoolers. It’s great for fine-motor skills and for pre-writing skills, and a wonderful way for children to explore art.
Tracing paper is something I’ve never thought to use here in the daycare until recently.
The hooligans love drawing and colouring, and I always have materials available for them to help themselves to.
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Generally, when it comes to drawing, we lean towards unstructured free art where the children can explore a variety of art supplies and materials.
Last week, however, I pulled out the tracing paper and the 3’s and 4’s had a wonderful time creating and colouring their own drawings.
This was a great activity for fine motor control, and a great exercise in preparing a child for drawing and printing on their own.
What we used:
- Tracing paper
- a permanent marker (sharpies or dry-erase markers work well)
- a board book with chunky illustrations
- kids markers for colouring the finished drawing
The process:
Each hooligans chose a picture to trace. Some chose a page from the board book in the above photo, and I had drawn a few simple images (a flower, a sailboat and a butterfly) for them to choose from as well.
I used tape to secure the tracing paper to the book to prevent it from sliding around, and for my hand-drawn images, I simply placed them on the table, placed a piece of tracing paper over top, and taped it down.
The hooligans used wide-tipped dry-erase markers to trace their images. Initially, they needed some direction, as their first instinct was to colour the picture.
Because they hadn’t done any tracing before, I demonstrated by tracing my finger along black lines of the illustrations, and explained to them how to follow those lines with their marker, until they had traced over all of them.
The children working on these drawings were 3 and 4, and I was really impressed by how well they did. Helping your child to establish a proper “pencil grip” will give them to best control their marker.
When they had finished their tracing, we lifted their tracing paper off of the original image, and they were WOWed by their work, and felt a real sense of pride and accomplishment with their finished drawings.
To finish them off, the hooligans coloured their drawings with washable markers.
Wouldn’t these look wonderful, framed simply, and hung on a wall?
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. In 1997, Jackie stepped out of the corporate world to start a family and to open her own home daycare. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
Erin- The Usual Mayhem
They did a great job! But why not frame them “backless” and hang them in a window instead?
Jill
What a great idea, my little boy is probably still a little young to have a go at this but may give it a try and see what happens, have pinned for future!
Perry
Actually the drawing is a natural way created by cute little young,