This is a post out of the 31 Days of Morning Circles. You can find the main page for this series here.

Note: If you’re reading this series for the first time, I suggest you look at the daily structure post to understand the routine we follow in our morning circle.

Drawing is an advanced skill for a child who needs support with fine motor activities. This is why at least once a week, we include some pre-writing/pre-drawing practice in the morning circle—even if we engage in more in-depth drawing activities later in the day or week.

Pre-drawing/pre-writing skills have been practiced since we first began homeschooling. They include drawing in the air with a finger, a flashlight, and a stick. We practice drawing lines up and down, lines side to side, a cross, circles, a square, a triangle, etc. We also practice tracing with a finger on printable trace sheets—primarily straight lines.

Since then, we’ve moved on to practicing holding crayons of different sizes and shapes. We’ve also worked on holding pencil-like objects.

To get my son to sit and explore crayons, we drew (hand-over-hand, with consent) our own silly pizza version of Signing Time’s “Silly Pizza Song” while singing the song. Our pizza has red apples, green zucchini, purple grapes, blue blueberries, brown cereal, and black licorice.

Below is one activity you can do today.

Drawing practice activity in morning circle

Use different writing boards (whiteboard, waterboard, chalkboard, etc.). Sitting behind the child, work hand-over-hand (with consent) to hold the writing tool.

Then, sing, chant, or tell stories while drawing:

• Lines and shapes
• Seasonal/holiday characters (e.g., apples, Jack-o-lantern, Santa Claus, Easter eggs, etc.)
• Story characters as you tell the story (e.g., Red Riding Hood, 3 Pigs, I Know an Old Woman who Swallowed a Fly, etc.)
• Nursery rhyme characters (e,g, “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “Humpty Dumpty,” etc.)

We chanted, “Here is a spider [draw face], here are his eyes [draw eyes], here is his mouth [draw mouth], and he has eight legs [count legs as we draw each leg].” By the third time we drew this, my son led my hand from left to right to draw the legs.

• Hands-on Learning Tools by Heather Greutman

(Note: I am an affiliate of Heather’s products. I will get a small commission if you use this link to purchase. You won’t be charged extra. I know you will find her materials helpful if you are looking for pre-writing/pre-drawing ideas.)

How do you incorporate drawing in the morning circle?

Related Article:

• Drawing Tips