tell me about your toddler's art...

[hildare]

dd LOVES to draw, and makes scribbles at 19 mos.  i'm impressed that she seems to spend a lot of time choosing colors, though, and is very deliberate in her scribble.  i let her use paint the other day and she did not want to fingerpaint, she wanted to use a brush.  she spent more time doing that than she has spent doing ANYTHING pretty much ever. 

what kind of art do you do with your toddler?

what does it look like?  what do they draw and how do they do it? 

and.. at what point can they draw something and label it as something (like call the scribble a dog or whatever)? 

i'm curious about what your little ones are doing & hope to get ideas, too :)

[mamandedeux]

My DS2 is also 19 months and loves to scribble too. I don't think he cares about choosing any specific colours and certainly not about what he draws. I think he's more of a Picasso: make a mess of it then let others figure it out. DS1 didn't start really drawing anything recognizable (by him or us) until closer to 3. Neither one of my kiddos ever enjoyed finger painting.

[MommaBirdie]

My 13 month old scribbles with crayons, paints his hands and puts them on paper...or will eat playdoh. lol
That's the extent of his art.
But my 30 month old loves all things art.
When she draws and scribbles she looks over it carefully until she finds scribbles that look like letters and gets very excited.
She draws lots of happy and sad faces...and fish (that just look like giant smile faces).
She loves painting and focuses on painting parallel lines (don't know why)
And building things, that she names but look like nothing, with playdoh.

She started drawing circles probably around 18 months and just kept building on that.
She didn't start describing what she was doing to me until around 2 yo.

[MommaBirdie]

I forgot, one thing both the kids love during car trips is the magna doodle.
They can draw and don't worry about dropping crayons or floppy paper.

[JudiAU]

Favorites at that age: magnadoodle (not other brands) the big one with four shapes, little magnadoodle for car, colored pencils (short lyra ferby are great at this age, and last a long long time, (the little snake from Nova Naturals to hold them is much loved, plus gives practice to putting in and out), we also love the good quality stockmar crayons (many like the blocks but both kids prefer the sticks), again last forever non-toxic, very big paper, colored paper, stickers of various types, including puffy, play dough or other modeling dough, fingerpaints, watercolors w/ lid, real watercolors mixed in a jar, when she is closer to 2 or 2.5 real clay is awesome

[JudiAU]

Also, if you want her to enjoy finger painting, do it with some edible like chocolate pudding or tapioca. And do it naked-ish so she can paint her body.

[Katico]

DD is 24 months and has been big into art since about...hmm, 16-18 mo?  

She literally spends hours a day with her crayons and colouring books - she holds her crayons properly and has started to try and colour different objects a certain colour instead of just random scribbles.

She likes to draw letters on her colouring - O's, L's, N's, etc.

Stickers are a big hit too - she really likes to decorate her colouring or paintings with stickers.

Painting - she prefers a brush over fingerpainting.  I just bought some canvases for her to use - you can paint over them with white or gesso and reuse them

We have tried a bit of collage - tissue paper, sequins, cotton balls, glue etc  but it doesn't hold her attention very long

Sidewalk chalk has been making lots of appearances this spring - Crayola makes "sidewalk crayons" and they're so great - smaller, shaped like crayons and in beautiful colours - much more appealing than those giant pastel ones

She has a large aquadoodle and that is always greeted with excitement - I just give her paintbrushes with water instead of the little water pens it comes with 

I got my very first handpainted mother's day card this year - Dh helped her make it and she was SO proud to give it to me.  My heart nearly burst 

I'm really looking forward to more intentional painting and drawing objects!

[grethel]

My 19 month old sounds a lot like yours, OP. She loves to scribble and will do it all day long with crayon, marker, pen, pencil. With the markers especially, she's very careful with the routine of picking each color, saying the name, drawing (sometimes circular scribbles, sometimes lines or slashes, sometimes wide sweeping strokes, sometimes very emphatic dots). After she's used each color she puts it back into the bunch of markers, but she does not use that color again until she's gone through all of the others.

With crayons, pencils etc. she holds them in the "correct" grip and prefers regular-sized. She doesn't like the fat ones and outright refuses to use the triangular or block style. I was a little perturbed at this at first because I made her some very lovely mixed color star-shaped crayons and she didn't want to try them at all. Maybe when she's a little older she'll branch out.

She always requests for us to draw her favorite animal, a kitty. Just last week she started doing her first deliberate labeled drawing when, after I drew the circle for the kitty's face and the ears, she took the marker from me, said "eyes," and scribbled in two little eyes. Now every time she asks us to draw a kitty, after we do the head and the ears, she takes over and makes eyes, nose, mouth and whiskers. The eyes usually are in the correct place for eyes and usually look like either little scribbled circles or arcs, the nose and mouth can vary, and the whiskers generally look like scribbly splotches on the side of the face.

She loves to paint with food-colored yogurt or tempera, but will only use a brush. She doesn't care much for using sidewalk chalk, as it's too fat for her to hold the way she likes and it gets her hands messy. She loves to "paint" the outside of the house and patio with water and a big brush.

[crunchy_mommy]

what kind of art do you do with your toddler?
drawing with crayons, pens, pencils, markers... painting with a brush or other objects (he can only handle finger painting for a couple of minutes tops, doesn't like dirty hands)... cutting paper, gluing things, playdough, simple crafts, simple woodworking projects, stickers, etc.

what does it look like? what do they draw and how do they do it? DS's favorite thing to draw is spirals. They look like... spirals. He also likes drawings circles, lines, and dots. He LOVES copying my drawings step by step (objects, shape sequences, etc.), but his version only comes out looking like mine maybe half the time, depending how complex it is. A line on the left of a circle -- he can copy no problem; other things, he'll mix up the parts or make a semi-circle into a full circle or whatever.

and.. at what point can they draw something and label it as something (like call the scribble a dog or whatever)? At some point last year (around 18mos maybe?) he started labeling some of his drawings but they really just looked like scribbles and lines and dots. It's only been recently (he's now 28mos, so I guess around age 2?) that what he is drawing (sometimes!) looks like what he says it is. He likes drawing animals, spiders, glasses, cars, etc. and you can often see the resemblance, though you have to squint sometimes, and just as often it looks like a big mess!!

[mckittre]

My 27 month old son loves to draw with markers, but isn't a big fan of crayons.  He'll tell you what he's drawing (a bird, the ocean, etc...), but it's not recognizable at all (sometimes eyes are dots, sometimes the ocean has waves, but that's about the extent of it).  If you ask him, he can point out where the wings, beak, eyes, etc... are, but they aren't in any sort of arrangement that you might understand.  Haven't done a whole lot of other craft stuff with him.  He does like cutting things with scissors, but uses them with 2 hands.  He likes playdough, but not for making things.  He squishes it flat and uses his animals and cars to make tracks in it. 

[springmum]

My 3 yr old is not artistic just yet. He can draw stick people, a couple of letters, a couple of shapes, but rarely anything else recognizable. After 5 min's of drawing he usually turns his markers into drumsticks - ha ha! (I think he will be more musically talented than artistic....)