Tic Tac Toe & Gestural Drawing

Road trips with children can be quite an adventure, and for whatever reason, maybe I like the torture of it all, we don't have a dvd player for our sweet little ones to enjoy along the way. If you are in the same boat as me I scramble for things for my girls to do along the way. When we came across this project I thought it would be such a great thing for my girls to do while sitting in the car for hours. Maybe just maybe it will stave off them asking, "how much longer until we're there" just a few minutes longer than they normally would. A traveling tic tac toe game! We make it all out of felt which is nice since felt tends to stick well to itself, making it harder to lose pieces. We precut the board and strips. The children each picked out their board color and glued the strips onto the board. We had templates for different icons for them to use as playing pieces. There were many to choose from x's, o's, squares, triangles, hearts, and stars. They picked their two playing pieces and traced them onto the two other colors of felt. This was a good challenge for children as they haven't quite learned how to efficiently use materials yet. We sort of forced the issue giving them smaller pieces and showing them ways to shift and move the pieces around to fit more than one shape onto the piece of felt. They then cut out all of their playing pieces. We then had them pick out a ribbon to tie up their game so they could take it with them wherever they go.

Today we discussed gestural drawing which is one of the easier drawing techniques, but harder for young children to understand. It is a good way to loosen up when getting ready to draw. Gestural drawing is essentially quick drawings that capture a moment, movement, or object. Gestural drawings don't focus on the detail but the shape and movement of the object. They tend to be a bit messier, but sometimes you just have to get "the idea" of what you are drawing. It is a good way to warm up when drawing, and if a form of sketching. I find most children try to focus on details, and really draw which is good, but they also can get very frustrated when it doesn't turn out like they thought. I find gestural drawing a good way to focus more on the big picture and then go back to the finer details once they have had a chance to draw the object quickly a few times. So our gestural drawing lesson was the children looking at a still life of small pumpkins and dried corn. I time them in short increments of 30 seconds to 60 seconds. It is a lot of fun, and the kids seem to enjoy it. It definitely relives them the pressure of having to make something look really good. Plus, they can become better artists practicing like this before they begin really drawing.