Draw a Dog with Simple Shapes

The big paper on this page is not empty. Four dotted shapes already sit on it, an oval for the head, one for each ear and a tall oval for the body, placed exactly where the dog's parts go. The child goes over the dotted shapes, draws the dog's outline around them and then adds the face, legs and tail from the four numbered steps on the left. On the cards the dog grows from outline to finished drawing with the new lines of each step in orange, the same way as on every how-to-draw page for kindergarten.

Shapes first is the oldest drawing lesson there is: a head is a circle, a body an oval, and the outline follows. Seeing the dotted ovals under the finished dog shows a child where a drawing comes from, and it quietly links drawing to the shape names of early geometry. Because the shapes fix the size and position, the dog comes out large and whole instead of cramped in a corner.

Print it and draw with a pencil; there is nothing to mark. The base page of the family gives the same cat-sized paper with nothing on it, and the trace page gives a grey model to draw over. The child draws the animal from its own steps; tracing letters, grid-copy pixels and symmetry drawing have their own pages.