No more stick figures

   NO MORE STICK FIGURES!     
 I attended a seminar several years ago.  I'm sorry to say that I can not remember the presenter's name. This classroom teacher had a great idea to teach children how to draw a person not a stick figure when doing a project.
      You start with an outline of a basic person.  The child can trace this figure very, very lightly on their paper.  Some students choose to put the outline on the window and place a second clean sheet on top and draw the clothing on the top sheet.

 I do talk about the fact that our clothing is not skin tight and is larger than our body. I have to explain this or the children will draw the clothing the same size as the body. When the clothing is added it might look something like this student drawn example. My kids looked at clothing styles and hair styles to enhance their drawings.  You can see the very light lines that were erased during the drawing process.
     These are the work of my 5th graders this week.  They are working on finishing their person who lived in Williamsburg and worked in a trade.  We have blacksmiths, coopers, milliners, wigmakers,
silversmiths, brickmakers, etc. 

 

Examples of completed work...

Or this example of mine...

I used this technique for a Social Studies explorer project many years ago. (Long before I started blogging. Even before there were blogs!)