Steps4Kids to Draw: Animals, People, Shapes & Things

PreS-Gr 4—This instructional art program introduces children to drawing basic shapes and an assortment of cartoon-style animals, people, and familiar objects. Bold, colorful graphics with lots of white space provide a clear menu from which users can select the item they wish to draw. A woman's gentle voice provides simple, nicely paced instruction, and a varied selection of subtle music creates a calming background for the lessons. All drawings, with the exception of the shapes, are presented in bold, black marker on a white background. A colored ground line is included in each demonstration of the drawings of animals and objects, but viewers are not shown how to create their own ground line. Seven shapes are demonstrated by drawing around the outside edges of a solid color representation, but, presumably, children will be drawing without benefit of this guide. There is little correlation between the shapes and the other drawings, so there is a considerable jump in skill level required. Instruction for curves, angles, and lines that don't connect to other lines can be frustratingly vague; for instance, "draw a curved line like this," or, "start your line here and draw it to here." Encouragement of creativity is noticeably absent. Children who like how-to-draw books might want to use this for a rainy day activity.—Cary Frostick, Mary Riley Styles Public Library, Falls Church, VA