We have been drawing quite a bit lately and I have started showing Addi a few letters on his black board (mostly focusing on his Name, well his nick name at least) he really has the “D” down and even calls it a D when he draws it. He can’t quite get the “A” yet, but has the idea. It doesn’t meet at the top so looks more like a “H” but I don’t think it will be long and he will get it. I can draw the pointy part of the A and he will always draw the line across.
Once Addi gets something, he does it over and over. So recently all he has been drawing is the letter D. That is until a couple days ago.
Usually when we draw with Addison, Nanny and myself draw little stick people with smiley faces. It seems that Addi has been paying close attention to this. For a long time he has been drawing circles and then all of a sudden he drew two lines for eyes and a line across for a mouth in one of his circles!!! A perfect smiley face.
We then went on to ask him, “what about a nose?” at which point he drew a little circle on the face where you would find a person’s nose! Next we asked him about ears, sure enough he drew two little circles either side of the circle head, without even being shown. Then we thought we would teach him hair. We would draw it on, eventually he developed his own style of hair, drawing a couple lines on top of the head, sometimes one really long line, and sometimes some scribble. Poppy even showed him eye brows and he started drawing these when asked.
We continued by drawing the stick figure body onto Addi’s smiley faces, then asked him to draw on the hands and feet at which point he drew little circles onto the ends of each line exactly where they should go. He has since started drawing his own version of a body, two lines coming down from the circle face and one line across, then he adds the hands and feet. Quite a clever way to draw a body.
I was very shocked with Addi drawing these sorts of recognisable figures and even with how fast he picked up the writing that I thought I would look up the ages that these skills can be expected in toddlers. Turns out I was right to be shocked, Addison is very advanced and drawing well before he should. I understand that all children develop in their own time and there isn’t really a right and wrong for when they should be doing particular things, but of course with everything there is an average age. If you remember, I started Addi drawing at the beginning of the year when he was sick so he would have been about 15 or 16 months old.
From what I’ve read, 12 to 18 month old start to hold a crayon/pencil etc and become quite good a scribbling on paper. Between 19 and 25 months (what Addi is) their scribbles start to take shape but doesn’t yet form letters or numbers as they can’t hold the crayon steadily enough (Addi clearly can). They spend much longer on each individual drawing rather than just making one swirl. They can imitate lines but apparently they won’t be very straight (Addi’s are extremely straight).
At about 29 or 30 months they are very interested in colouring and painting, making art and not just scribbles. They try to represent real objects and incorporate language into drawings. If you look closely you might see that larger scribbles are figures and others are attempts at letters or words. At 2 1/2 they are usually able to a crayon/pencil in a solid writing position to master the up and down movement to make a “V.” By the time they are 3 they start making circular strokes and be able to write a few letters or squiggles that look like letters. They will start writing some or all of their name on or just over 3 years. At preschool they generally are able to write their first name. At some point before they turn 5 they will make horizontal lines, copy circles and squares, and draw people (generally starting off with stick figures and then adding on curves as they practice).
I found a forum of mothers talking about when their children started drawing faces, I think the youngest I found was 2 to 2 1/2. Based on all this my little (only just) 21 month old son is doing very well and I’m extremely proud of his artistic ability!! With such an arty Mummy, who is really surprised!! 
Here are some of Addison’s faces that he has done (I’ve tried to pick out all the ones that were just his drawings, where we didn’t help add a body etc…there is one that Nanny drew a hat on for Addi but the rest of the work is Addison’s).
These are just some of what he drew, basically once he started he didn’t stop and kept drawing face after face!!
