From your wee one's sweeping scribbles to your new elementary schooler's representational drawings, our age-by-age guide can help you understand how your child's art and writing skills may be developing. Take a look:
Age 1 to 2: The Random-Scribbling Stage
During this stage, kids:
- Take great pleasure in feeling the movement of their arm and the crayon
- Often don't even look at the page as they are creating
- Eventually become interested in the page when they notice the cause and effect of their movements and the drawings that result
- By age 2, may start to label or “name” their scribbles
Age 3 to 4: The Pre-symbolism Stage
During this stage, kids:
- Explore and manipulate materials with a more purposeful action, as in “controlled scribbling”
- Enjoy the result of repetitive actions — creating shapes, such as circles, spirals, and lines. (Help your child practice with this fun color-the-shapes printable!)
- May expand their shape repertoire to include ovals, squares, rectangles, as well as wiggly and jagged lines. Work is less by chance and more by design
- Attempt to represent the human form with simple figures that are mostly heads with legs and arms!
- May also start experimenting with simple shapes that represent letters to them, and may also make a few familiar letters repeatedly and “read” them to you
Age 5 to 6: The Symbolism Stage
During this stage, kids:
- Begin experimenting with simple representational drawings (self-portraits, family, house, pets, vehicles, and nature are favorites)
- May start including more detail in their drawings (figures have clothes, expressions, and are placed in settings that have “ground” at the bottom of the page)
- Have more control over the direction and size of the lines they draw and pay attention to where they place them on the page
- Use art to communicate feelings and ideas
- May use the letters of their name (or other letters they know) repeatedly to write a message
- Some may experiment with spelling in their own (often semiphonetic) way; others are showing interest in “real” spelling and writing