Building & Drawing Shapes

Have fun with shapes! You can build shapes with your hands and draw them on paper.

Try building a shape. Use sticks or straws for the sides. Use clay balls to hold the corners together. Push a stick into two clay balls. Add more sticks until your shape is closed.

Now try drawing. Draw a line across the bottom of your paper. Draw two lines going up. Draw one more line across the top. You made a rectangle.

You can also use shape blocks or puzzle pieces. Push the pieces together to make a new, bigger shape. Then count the sides of your new shape.

Ask a grown-up to play along. Can you draw a triangle with 3 sides? Can you draw a shape with 4 sides? Keep practicing and your shapes will get better every time.

Did you know you can build with spaghetti? Dry spaghetti breaks easily, but when you glue pieces together it gets strong.

Start by planning your bridge. Look at how a real bridge is made. It has triangles and rectangles in its frame.

Lay spaghetti pieces on a table. Make one triangle first. Glue the ends where the pieces meet. Wait for the glue to dry.

Now join lots of triangles together. Shapes made of triangles can hold a lot of weight.

When your frame is dry, test it. Rest it between two books and see how much it can hold. Be gentle, spaghetti can still snap.

Want to get better at drawing? Start with simple shapes. Draw boxes, balls, and tubes. These are the building blocks of drawing.

First draw them flat. Draw a square. Draw a circle. Draw a triangle. Do it lots of times until your hand remembers the shapes.

Then try drawing them as solid shapes. A square can become a box. A circle can become a ball.

Pick easy things around you and break them into shapes. A house is a square with a triangle on top. An ice cream cone is a triangle with a circle on top.

Keep a sketchbook and draw a little every day.

You can make a sculpture, which is a shape you build with your hands.

There are two fun ways. Addition means you add material to build up, like clay or paper mache. Reduction means you take material away, like carving.

First, sketch your idea. Draw the shape you want to make. It does not need to be perfect. The drawing shows where each part goes.

If you use clay, roll balls and long snakes. Join them to make your shape. Smooth the joins with your fingers.

Step back and look at your sculpture from all sides. Fix any part that needs it. Let it dry, and you made art you can hold.

A diorama is a little scene you build inside a box. It is like a tiny world you make yourself.

First pick your theme. It could be the woods, the sea, or a farm.

Gather your supplies. You can use modeling clay, colored paper, glue, scissors, and paint.

Build the shapes you need. Roll clay into balls for rocks. Cut paper into triangles for trees. Fold paper into a box shape for a house.

Glue everything inside your box. Put big things in the back and small things in the front. Now you have a scene full of shapes you built and drew yourself.