When I first created Young Rembrandts, I was teaching a lot of preschool classes. We see huge academic and social benefits to getting young kids into art and drawing at an early age. But this story is about our elementary students. Elementary children are equally impacted by the arts. I have talked a lot about the relationship between art and learning styles but today I want to focus on artistic skill development.

Check out these two drawings, both done by the same student:

Week One: Milk and Cookies

Week Two: Angel and Snowflakes

A young boy, age 6, recently enrolled in a Young Rembrandts’ Elementary Drawing class. He’d never been in one of our classes and in his very first class he completed his first still life drawing – Milk and Cookies. It’s a beautiful piece. Look closely and you will see the green plate, colorful cookies, and a window in the background. This was a pretty complex drawing for a young student and he did great. Notice his hard work on the snowflakes in the background and the control and effort he used in coloring in the entire drawing with color pencils.

One week later, the same child completed his second drawing – an Angel Graphic. The drawing is much clearer, the subject very identifiable and the results are impressive. Notice the dramatic improvement from week one to week two. The snowflakes in the background are more precise and the coloring technique around them is controlled and steady. We can see strong clean lines outlining this angelic piece of work and know he mastered using the Sharpie!

Young Rembrandts drawing classes aren’t a one-time event. They’re repeated week after week, often as afterschool enrichment programs. Every week children make huge advances in their drawing skills, fine motor control and coloring technique; and at the same time they’re making equally large advances in their confidence and learning abilities.  Start your child strong this year, enroll him/her child in Young Rembrandts today!

Bette Fetter Founder and CEO of Young Rembrandts and Author of Being Visual [email protected] Follow Bette on Twitter