Kumon My First Book of Drawing (Kumon Workbooks)

The Kumon series of books works by empowering children to succeed on their own. The books get successively more difficult as they build upon skills learned from the previous pages, so that by the end of the book the child has a sense of accomplishment and be ready to move on to the next level. The instructor is more of a mentor or coach than a teacher in a classroom. This drawing book is designed to help teach basic drawing skills by tracing simple shapes. There are four blocks showing the stages of how to draw each object. The last block is the completed drawing and the child is encouraged to color it in. The book begins with an apple which is basically a circle with a stem. It shows how to draw it in a three step process: first draw a circle, then add an arc at the top for a 3d effect, then one more small arc for the stem. It encourages tracing over their drawing on the front of the page, then on the back there's a space to try it again for practice. There are 40 drawings in this book and they get progressively harder as you go on. By the end of the book there are pictures of block houses, tea kettles, and dolls. Here are the drawings included in this book so you can see the progression: An apple, baseball, balloon, orange, cherry, egg, snow cone, acorn, mushroom, eggplant, hot dog, strawberry, hamburger, boot, cap, watermelon, shirt, mouse, bear, dog, fox, cupcake, tulip, spoon, pan, whale, kite, mug, lunch box, baby bottle, key, bat, glasses, parachute, cat, clown face, die, blocks, kettle, and doll. This is a great workbook for any child who is interested in learning how to draw and developing pre-writing skills!

I agree 100% with other 2 5-star ratings ( Ursula K. Raphael "AstraDaemon" (USA) and Mommy of Four) - this is an excellent book for development of artistic ability as well as fine motor skills. Child learns to follow on the line and sees clearly the progression of the drawings. Before this book my daughter would get frustrated while drawing because she wasn't seeing the object immediately. By putting the drawing as 4 steps, with each the steps being repeated until the 4th step, she realises now that it may not look like a fox, a hotdog, a boot, a bat, etc with the first few lines but you add detail to get what you want. Yes you would need clean sheets to do additional drawings. Plus my daughter loves to gift drawings to people! so lots of additional pages for additonal drawings. I got crayons for her white board so she'll use that as well. Parents pay attention too, because you may be called upon to draw when their memory doesn't remember the stroke to make to get the picture! 40 day-to-day items: food, fruit, animal faces, toys, utensils. I'm surprised that KUMON doesn't have a more advanced set of drawing books to continue the progression as they do alphabet-sentences, numbers-multiplication, number games-dollars & cents. I still need help with a princess, horse (full body), house, more full body animals, dragons, etc.

I've ordered 7 Kumon workbooks so far. My 4 year old loves drawing and this seemed like a way to help expand her repertoire of things to draw. She puts her own twists on each one. They progress logically. I just copy each page as I have younger child that I plan to use this with as well. Each page shows an object then goes through a series of steps that the child traces until it is created. On the back of the sheet has an empty space for the child to draw the picture.as with all kumon workbooks, paper is thick and of great quality. I do wish the pages were perforated and the binding is really tight and awkward to do the pages while in - I copy them all.

This is a REALLY great book for my daughter. She is behind in her drawing skills developmentally (age six drawing like 3) We bought this book and use it with a clear tracing template that she can use with dry erase markers, so she can practice over and over again. She really needs the step by step intstruction and it helps they have a photo of what the completed picture should look like so she can embellish her final drawing. LOVE IT!

After looking through the drawing material, I would recommend this book starting at age 5 or 6. Most kids in the age group that the book is recommended for don't have the fine motor skills to draw the pictures in this book. It does offer tracing but some pages ask the kids to draw an exact image of a picture presented.

Another great Kumon book! My son's drawing skills have improved dramatically since using this book. He has so much fun drawing and coloring the pictures. It breaks down each picture into four stages that are easy to follow and easy to comprehend. Each stage of the drawing builds on the previous stage. The book is set up so that the easiest drawings are at the beginning, and then they get progressively more challenging.

We love all of the Kumon books. Use them in the summer so he stays on top of his school work and doesn't forget anything. This one is just fun drawing one. He is 5 and very easily follows along with the instructions loves it. :)

This book has simple drawing directions, any mommy, daddy or child could use it on their own. My husband is using it to teach our children to draw the objects and they beg for "art lessons" all the time. Lately they have been picking up the book and doing it on their own (they are 5 and 4). My husband is professional artist, and this gets his thumbs up for ease of use, and basic skills taught.