The fourth-grade Girl Scouts went to the Montclair Art Museum for a tour and drawing activity as part of the Drawing/Painting badge. I wanted to accompany them because I probably wouldn’t have been motivated to go otherwise. It’s shameful because I drive by MAM all the time. It’s a very small museum compared to others like the Met or the Brooklyn Museum of Art, but it is a perfect museum for children.

Because it’s been a long time since I last taught children how to draw and paint, it was helpful to see what the tour guide pointed out to the kids to help them appreciate art. It was also interesting to see how the drawing/painting activity engaged the girls. At this age, there is nothing they seem to love more than drawing, painting, cutting, and gluing. In my lesson, however, I want the kids to learn how to sketch. This will be a challenge because they are so used to drawing objects symbolically, and I want them to learn to draw what they see.

The image on the left is how I anticipate they would draw a still life of a kiwi fruit, and the image on the right is how I am going to encourage them to draw it.

It shouldn’t be too hard to have them feel around the forms and lightly sketch the shapes they see, should it?