They are many methods of learning and tracing is one of them but tracing is also a method that most of us overlooked. What is so great about tracing? It’s just an action where the child follows and draw/write. It’s just like copying. Well, it may look really simple but there are several benefits to that simple tracing action especially for preschoolers who are learning to write.
Here are the benefits of tracing:
– develop children’s fine motor skills especially when learning to write
– to improve their hands/eyes coordination, dexterity, and spatial awareness
– refine children’s muscles and coordination when tracing different shapes
– with improved visual-spatial and fine motor skills, it set a child to have higher achievement in reading and mathematics
With so many benefits you can get from a simple tracing activity, will you still overlook this? I guess not, huh.
Tracing is an art of learning and is a way to learn an art. We made use of tracing in our art lesson today. Smarties love tracing. They traced their toys, shadows, hands and feet. So over the weekend, we did a drawing of “ME” by tracing their hands and feet. Sounds easy? It is easy!
First, they traced their feet on the paper. Make sure you have at least a drawing paper so that it is big enough to “fit in your body” as well, later on.
Next, trace the hands. Tracing the hands is a very good exercise for the children. Because of the “inconsistency”, it requires extra practice tracing the patterns, thus providing more exercising on their fine motor and visual-spatial skills which in turn made gains in mathematics.
Once, all tracing is done. Visualization and creativity take place here. They have to draw the rest of their body within the paper. Don’t like to draw sitting at the table, no worries. You can find your comfortable position and let your creativity juice flows.
The final step is to add in the colors!
The final results of their portraits: Awesome!
You may be wondering why is the face blue?
Because mei mei loves blue.
Do I restrict or control how she colors her drawing?
No, I don’t because that will extinguish her creativity sparks.
During the process, smarties had a great time comparing the size of their hands and feets. If you noticed, gor gor has the concept of front and back. The drawing of his foot actually overlapped his hand. Tracing may be simple, drawing and coloring may be simple but there are lots of learning abilities and skills developed while your child/children are working on it.
So, do you still think tracing is nothing great after this?
Wow, nice! My kids have been having fun with tracing paper recently. A different kind of tracing 🙂
Thank you Mummy Ed! Yes, is fun tracing own hands and feet, and create a drawing out of it.
Give it a try and share your kids’ drawings too 😉
Ah never really thought too much about tracing. Thanks for telling me more of its benefits and I love the art idea!
Ai @ Sakura Haruka
Our pleasure 🙂
I love the end result! It’s so lovely. Tracing activities are indeed very beneficial for kids not to mention super fun! 🙂
Yes, it is! You can work together with your kids too 🙂
This is a simple but yet very effective in engaging the kids! Love the art especially the perspective. Thanks for sharing!
Yes, simple and fun! At least got them occupied for a period while I do the cooking 😉
My kids loveee tracing as well and we do it using dotted lines that forms alphabets, or the usual tracing of hands and feet. It is so much fun! I am 30 years old and I still enjoy tracing my hands sometimes hahahaha
Me too!! I always trace my hands and do some zentangle designs on it…just like doing “henna” 😀