This is me!
Author: Marieke la Verge
Pediatric exercise therapist and founder of Beweegwereld
A roll of (wallpaper), pencils and scissors. The basic ingredients to stimulate motor development and body awareness in a creative way together with your child. Read here how your child playfully practices cutting and coloring, but also learns about proportions, body parts and spatial concepts.
You take a roll of (wallpaper) paper (such as from IKEA) or stick a number of sheets of paper together, in any case large enough for your child to fit on it. Let your child lie down on it and outline the entire body with a pencil. Ask your child active questions such as; "where am I drawing now (also fun to do with the child's eyes closed)", "how many of this body part do you have" or "can you pretend to stick this body part to the paper". And of course it is also very fun to do it the other way around. So you on the paper and your child drawing and asking questions.
After tracing, your child can of course finish and colour in his own drawing. Because the areas are quite large, we used the triangular crayons from Staedtler . They fit perfectly in the hand and give a nice result. Let your child look in a mirror or at your face to learn where the eyes, nose and mouth are exactly and how high. Practice the names of the fingers when you draw nails on them and challenge your child by asking them to colour in the armpits, eyebrows, ankles, wrists or elbows. During my work in practice, a child once could not think of the word 'elbow' and called it 'the knee of my arm'. Clever and well explained, right?!
Is the drawing completely finished? Let your child estimate how long it is. Then measure with a tape measure how big the drawing is and whether that matches reality (put the tape measure at the heel if you have drawn the entire foot otherwise it is not correct).
If your child likes it and can already cut to some extent, it is fun to cut out the drawing (possibly with a little help from you) completely. Then your child can play with his own drawing, repeat the body parts playfully and he also always has a friend nearby. Have fun together!
