How to Draw a Gingerbread Man - Free Directed Drawing Art Lesson

Let's create a festive gingerbread man! Grab your paper and drawing materials, and follow these steps:

1.  Head - Draw a large oval or circle for the head. Make sure it's centered at the top of your paper.

2.  Body - Just below the head, draw a slightly elongated oval or rectangle for the body. It should be about twice the height of the head. 

3. Arms - From the top sides of the body, draw two curved lines extending outward and s lightly upward to form the arms. They should be about the same length as the body. You can erase the top of the oval inside the body.

4. Legs  - From the bottom of the body, draw two slightly curved lines extending downward for the legs. They should be a little longer than the arms.

5. Face  - Add two small circles for the eyes and a larger circle or oval for the mouth. You can add a small dot in each eye for the pupils. Draw a curved line or small oval for the nose. 

6. Buttons - Draw three small circles down the center of the body for buttons. You can make them different colors to add some fun detail. Also, erase the bottom curve of the circle head.

7. Details - Add wavy lines around the edges of the arms, legs, and head to represent the icing.

   - You can add more decorations like a bow tie, stripes, or patterns on the gingerbread man's body.

8. Coloring - Color the gingerbread man brown to represent the cookie.

   - Use bright colors for the icing, buttons, and other decorations.

And there you have it—a delightful gingerbread man ready for the holidays! 🎄🍪

Enjoy your drawing, and feel free to add any additional details to make it even more festive! 

For fun holiday early finishers worksheets, visit my TPT SHOP: Art Sub Lessons.

How to Draw a Christmas Tree - Free Directed Drawing

 How to Draw a Christmas Tree - Directed Drawing

Let's create a festive Christmas tree. Grab your paper, pencils, and perhaps some colorful markers or crayons:

1. **Triangle Outline**:

   - Start by drawing a large triangle in the center of your paper. This will be the outline of your tree. Draw it lightly so that you can erase it easily later.

2. **Branches**:

   - Along the sides of the triangle, draw several curved lines to create the look of pine branches. These lines should fan out slightly and get smaller as you move up the tree. 

3. **Tree Trunk**:

   - At the bottom center of the triangle, draw a small rectangle for the tree trunk.

4. **Decorations**:

   - Erase the lightly drawn guidelines you drew in the beginning. Draw strings of lights or garlands by adding curved lines that wrap around the tree.

- Add circles and ovals for ornaments, scatter them throughout the tree. You can also add a star at the top of the tree by drawing a small, five-pointed star.

5. **Presents**:

   - Draw small rectangles and squares at the base of the tree to represent presents. Add bows and ribbon details to make them festive.

6. **Coloring**:

   - Color the tree green, the trunk brown, and the ornaments in a variety of bright colors. Use yellow for the star and different shades for the lights and garlands.

7. **Background**:

   - Add some background details like snowflakes, a snowy ground, or even a fireplace with stockings.

And there you have it—a beautiful, festive Christmas tree! 🎄✨

Would you like some easy and fun worksheets for the Christmas season? Check these out at my TPT shop: Art Sub Lessons

Here are some examples: 

Create an Elf in Disguise.    Only $.99

Create a Reindeer in Disguise.   Only $.99

Doodle a Nutcracker. Only $.99

Draw a Gingerbread House. Only $.99

There also some full length art sub lessons there for you to buy.

Doodle Monsters in Winter. Only $4.00

Doodle Monsters at Christmas.  Only $4.00

Art Sub Lesson Plan - How to Draw a Monster

How to Draw Doodle Monsters

This is the time of year that kids are most intrigued by monsters. They're everywhere you look in the stores and on TV! At school though, you don't want your students to work on grisly, bloody creatures. So, I like to teach them how to draw doodle monsters.

Doodle monsters are friendly looking and not at all scary. Drawing a doodle monster lets kids be creative and draw as crazy a creature as they can imagine.

Step-by-Step for Drawing a Monster

When I have kids drawing doodle monsters, I like to have lots of visuals around. Having examples of cartoon eyes, noses, mouths, ears, hair, arms, bodies, and legs is key. Examples give kids a good jumping off point. They are less likely to have  artist's block when they can see so many options.

Doodle monsters are made of such simple shapes, anyone can draw them. 

Let me show you how to draw a super simple one.

Step 1.  Draw a simple shape for the monster's body. Using a variety of lines makes it look interesting.

Step 2.  Draw simple eye shapes. It can be one eye, or many.

Step 3. Draw a mouth. It might be toothy or not.

Step 4.  Color in the monster. Start by outlining the shape.

Step 5. Color in the shape neatly.  To make it look more three dimensional, color more heavily around the edges.

One monster, DONE!

They can fill a whole sheet with these simple creatures. Varying the shapes, lines, patterns and colors will make the drawing more interesting. The more examples you have around to inspire the students, the better.

Get the Lesson Plan and Visuals

I love teaching how to draw these monsters, so I have created lesson plans for teaching doodle monsters during the different seasons. They were written for a sub, so they are fully scripted; use simple materials; and have lots of examples.

Here are some visuals from the one I created for Halloween. I have made versions for kids who want to draw Halloween monsters and another for kids who want to draw fall monsters. (Not all students are allowed, nor want to, draw Halloween imagery, so I have taken this into account.)

Here's where you can find my lesson and all the visuals:  Art Sub Lesson - Doodle Monsters at Halloween. It's only $4.00 and will save you hours and hours of time.

Blog Posts about Doodle Monsters

Check out these blog posts about Doodle Monsters at other seasons:

Doodle Monsters at Christmas and Winter

Doodle Monsters at Valentines Day

9 Halloween Art Sub Lessons

9 Halloween Art Lesson Plans Easy Enough for a Sub

Here are some fun lessons for October. I’ll add some that can be adapted for those kids who cannot use Halloween imagery for religious or personal reasons.

First, here’s one I just created. Kids love drawing “doodle monsters.” They are easy shapes to draw and there are so many options for adding fun details. 

In this art lesson, I gave examples of doodle monster drawings that are either Halloween focused, with mummies, ghosts, witches, and the likes plus an example of one with none of that. It has footballs, fall trees, hot cocoa, and warm clothes. Kids will appreciate that options are given for either direction.

You can find that lesson in my TpT shop:  Doodle Monsters at Halloween.

At the Mrs Art Teacher Lady blog. you can find a directed drawing. "Halloween Bats and Frankenstein Monsters" is a lesson that both upper and lower elementary kids will have fun drawing. It uses simple materials, so would be great for a substitute teacher.

The TpT shop, "Cool Classroom Stuff" has an activity that would be super easy for your sub to teach. This one is focused on Mexican Sugar Skulls. Your kids will be engaged and happy to work on this one.

Here's another one at "Cool Classroom Stuff." This is a fall themed one and would be good for fourth grade through middle school. 

This radial symmetry lesson has templates and sample templates to help kids out.

Amy, at Makes and Takes, gives step-by-step instructions and many visuals for this lesson. She used black paper and oil pastel, but this could easily be done with crayons on lighter paper.

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At Panicked Teacher, Susie gives you step by step instructions on how to make this patterned pumpkin.  I believe she is a classroom teacher who has to supplement art instruction in her class for most of the school year.

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This lesson, at ArtfulNest, was written for middle school.  You could write it up as a fifth-grade lesson or a sixth-grade one.  You could also bring it down to the upper primary grades with a change of media.  Leave your subs some good visuals.  They could teach this!           

 

This Halloween art lesson is fun for students and easy to teach. The prep for this is minimal. Students will need paper; one black crayon per student; and assorted other crayon colors. I call it a “print and go” lesson as that is all you need to do.

It includes full instructions and visuals. You could even post it as an art learning center in the classroom.

“Creating Silly Monsters” is a fun lesson about monsters that you could use in an art center; as a regular art lesson; or for an art sub. It is super easy to teach and kids will love it. Check it out at TPT Shop: Centers and Early Finishers  It would be timely around Halloween but could be taught any time.

This lesson was posted on a blog called, “Clown and Poodle.” It appears that it no longer exists. However, I had written a blog post inspired by the original, and that still exists. You can see that complete lesson in my blog post here: Purple People Eater

Spring Directed Drawing - How To Draw A Bird With Your Pencil

Directed Drawings for Kindergarten and First Grade

Art sub plans for primary students can be tricky. You really need to keep them engaged.

I noticed that there are not a lot of kindergarten art sub lessons out in the world, ready to use, so I created a few. 

Directed drawings are loved by elementary students. I like for them to have room for individuality and creativity too. Here are ones that work great for spring and summer.

This lesson was written for kindergarten and first grade, but I added a second lesson in the package for the rest of elementary. 

"Kooky Birds on a Branch" is a directed drawing that can be drawn as three birds on top of a branch or two birds on top of a branch and one hanging under. Kids follow, step by step, for the drawing part and then add their own details.

It also teaches how to color neatly and includes a rubric.

"Springtime Bird with Pattern and Flowers" was written for kindergarten but older elementary students would enjoy drawing it as well. It includes a template for making this a greeting card.

It is also no prep and fully scripted.

The last one, "Bird in a Tree with Flowers," is a directed drawing for elementary students that can also be used as a greeting card. It is also no prep and fully scripted.

Robot Roundup | Art Sub Lessons

Robot Roundup - Art Sub Lesson Plans

Robots! Here is a fun elementary art lesson about robots that can be taught by anyone. This PowerPoint shows real robots and has scripted questions to ask the students. It shows how to draw a robot, step-by-step, and then leaves the details up to the students. Kids will love it and so will subs and teachers.

 You may find it here:  TeachersPayTeachers shop: Art Sub Lessons

Here is a preview:

 Feedback from this lesson:

"This was the perfect lesson to leave with a guest teacher! My students loved the lesson. It kept them on-task and engaged!! Thank you!"

"My subs have told me how well they along with the students loved this activity. They also said that it challenges each grade level. "

"My 3rd graders loved creating their robots. Easy to Understand and great got a student that is apprehensive about their drawing skills."

How to Draw a Turkey for Thanksgiving - Kindergarten

Turkey Directed Drawing for Thanksgiving

If you have an art sub who can lead a simple directed drawing, here's a super cute one for fall. Proud to be Primary has a lesson on her blog with complete directions.  Kindergarten kids will love it!  Of course, you might not want to leave paint with a sub.  (By the way, YOU DON"T WANT TO LEAVE  PAINT WITH A SUB!!!)  But, kids can draw this and color it with crayons and still end up with a lovely work to take away with them.

 Art Lesson Plan for Kindergarten

If you would like an early finisher activity about turkeys, I have this worksheet at my TPT shop: Art Sub Lessons.  "Create a Turkey in Disguise." Great for elementary kids.

If you are interested in a lesson on how to draw a simple turkey, check out this blog post: 

Art Sub Lesson: Thanksgiving Drawing.

How to Draw a Turkey in Disguise - Elementary Art Lesson

This is a complete lesson plan on drawing a turkey.  There are simple directions on the basic turkey shape and then examples for how it might be in disguise. This is a fun lesson for elementary kids and can be taught by anyone. 

You can find this lesson here in my TPT Shop:  Art Sub Lesson - Create a Turkey in Disguise

Art Sub Lesson - Robot Roundup

Robot Roundup | Art Sub Plans for Elementary

Robots! Kids love robots! This is a fully prepared and ready-to-teach sub lesson. 

It is one that really gets the kids engaged. They look at photos of different types of robots and get to share what they know about them. Then they are led through a drawing lesson in which they may either follow along to draw a simple robot shape or draw one independently.



Afterward, they add all the details they can imagine. They are encouraged to think about what sorts of jobs their robot could do; what background would fit in their plan; and what other objects would fit well in the drawing. They are given tips on how to color neatly to finish the work. When teaching this lesson as a sub, I have never had a disinterested student. 

You can find this lesson at m TeachersPayTeachers shop: Art Sub Lessons.  It is perfect for a sub as it is fully formed.  All the sub has to do is show the pictures and read what is printed.  They do not have to know how to draw to teach this lesson.  It is all right there in the lesson.

Robot Line Drawings | Art Sub Lesson

Robot Line Drawings | Art Sub Lessons

If you are looking for a fully formed lesson, check out my drawing lesson here: Robot Roundup

It can be shown as a PowerPoint or printed out and shown with the students close up. It was indended as a lesson for a substitute, but certainly may be used in a classroom by anyone.

Here is another option for a robot lesson.

This drawing came from here:  Primary Sea