50 Drawing Ideas for Kids, Plus 8 Drawing Games to Play Together

"I don't know what to draw."

It tends to arrive about four minutes after you've set out the paper, the pens and the good crayons. The blank page is the problem. "Draw anything you like" is much harder than it sounds, for children and adults alike.

A prompt fixes that. Give a child something slightly odd to draw, like a house for a worm or a dog that can fly, and the pen usually starts moving. Below you'll find 50 drawing ideas sorted by age, a set of imaginary animal prompts, and eight drawing games to play together. Borrow freely.

Why does a prompt work better than "just draw something"?

A blank page asks a child to make two decisions at once: what to draw, and how to draw it. A prompt takes the first decision away, so all their energy goes into the second. Strange prompts often work best, because there's no right way to draw a cloud that's lost its shoes.

Drawing isn't only a way to fill an afternoon, either. In experiments at the University of Waterloo, people often remembered more than twice as many words when they drew them instead of writing them down. Those studies were with adults, not children. Still, it's a good reminder that drawing is a form of thinking, not just colouring in.

Easy drawing ideas for kids aged 3 to 5

At this age the doing matters more than the drawing. Between 1948 and 1966, the educator Rhoda Kellogg collected around a million drawings by children aged two to eight. She found they develop in a predictable order: scribbles first, then shapes and patterns, and only later pictures of people and things. So if the "cat" is three circles and a line, that's right on schedule. Keep prompts simple and physical.

1. A monster made only of circles
2. The sun having a bad day
3. Rain falling on your favourite toy
4. A very, very long snake that fills the whole page
5. What you ate for breakfast
6. A house for a tiny mouse
7. Your hand, traced, then turned into an animal
8. Balloons, as many as you can fit
9. A fish in the silliest colours you can find
10. A grown-up with super long arms

Fun drawing ideas for kids aged 6 to 8

Six to eight is when kids start holding a little story in their heads, so give them a situation rather than a thing. Ask one follow-up question when they finish, and you'll often get a whole plot.

11. A robot that does your chores. What does it get wrong?
12. Your dream treehouse, with a secret room
13. The inside of a dragon's backpack
14. A car that can drive on the ceiling
15. Your family as animals. Who is which?
16. A shop that sells only one very strange thing
17. The view from inside a bird's nest
18. A pet that hasn't been invented yet
19. A birthday cake for someone who hates cake
20. Your teacher as a superhero
21. What your shoes get up to while you're asleep
22. A pirate island map, with an X somewhere
23. A superhero whose power is very small, like finding lost socks
24. A school at the bottom of the sea

Drawing ideas for ages 9 to 12 (and things to draw when you're bored)

Older kids sometimes go quiet on drawing because they've started judging their work against "realistic." Prompts about ideas, not accuracy, get around that. These double as things to draw when you're bored, for teenagers and grown-ups too.

25. Your street 100 years from now
26. A comic strip about the worst day in a pencil's life
27. A stamp for a country you invented
28. One object drawn three times: tiny, huge, and melting
29. Your bedroom as an ant would see it
30. A poster for a film that doesn't exist
31. Your own hand, holding something impossible
32. An album cover for your favourite song
33. A vending machine that sells feelings
34. A city built on the back of a giant animal
35. Yourself at 80 years old
36. Your room, redesigned with no rules and no budget
37. Your name, drawn as a building
38. Today, drawn as a treasure map

Imaginary animal drawing prompts (our favourite kind)

"Draw an animal that doesn't exist" is one of the best prompts there is, and it has a research history. In a well-known 1990 study published in Cognition, Annette Karmiloff-Smith asked 54 children aged 4 to 11 to draw a house, a man and an animal, and then to draw ones that don't exist. The younger children mostly changed the size or shape of parts, or left parts out. Older children were far more likely to add new parts, sometimes borrowed from a different kind of thing altogether.

So don't worry if a five-year-old's "animal that doesn't exist" is simply a very big dog. That's completely normal. Each prompt below nudges a different way of changing an animal.

39. An animal with too many legs. How many? What are they all for?
40. A creature that's half one animal and half another
41. An animal that lives inside a cloud
42. A pet that's bigger than your house
43. An animal with no head at all. Where does it keep its eyes?
44. A creature that only eats one colour
45. An animal made entirely of your breakfast
46. A deep-sea fish nobody has discovered yet
47. A bird that can't fly but can do something better
48. A monster that's scared of children
49. A creature that's mostly ears
50. The animal that lives under your bed, drawn as friendly

Once it's drawn, give it a name, a favourite food and a home, and write them on the back. You'll be glad you did.

If one creature becomes a real favourite, you can go a step further and turn the drawing into a photo of the real animal, extra legs and all. We made a tool for exactly that, called Crayon to Creature. It keeps every "mistake" your child drew instead of quietly correcting them.

What are the best drawing games for kids?

Games take the pressure off, because nobody's drawing is supposed to look good. Most of these need nothing but paper and pens, and they work well with mixed ages. Grown-ups are allowed to play. In fact, they're encouraged.

1. Fold-over monsters

Fold a sheet of paper into three. The first player draws a head at the top, lets the neck lines peek just over the fold, and folds it back so nobody can see. The next player draws a body, the next draws legs. Then unfold it and meet your creature. Surrealist artists in 1920s Paris played the same game and called it exquisite corpse, a name most kids find hilarious.

2. The squiggle game

One person draws a quick random squiggle. The other turns it into something. Then swap. The paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott used a version of this with children, and the author Anthony Browne wrote a whole picture book about it, which he calls the Shape Game.

3. Roll a monster

Grab a die. Roll it once for each body part, and whatever number comes up is how many the monster gets.

Roll for	Example roll	Your monster gets
Eyes	5	Five eyes
Legs	1	One leg (it hops)
Arms	6	Six arms
Horns	3	Three horns

4. Draw what I describe

One person describes a picture without saying what it is: "a big circle, two small triangles on top, a long curly line at the back." The other draws it. Then compare with what the describer had in mind. It's a surprisingly good listening game.

5. Eyes-closed portraits

Draw each other with your eyes shut, or without looking down at the paper. Everyone's portrait is terrible, which is the point. Expect a lot of laughing.

6. One-line drawing

Draw something without lifting the pen off the paper even once. A cat, a bike, a person. It's harder than it sounds and works for any age.

7. Pass the page

Everyone starts a drawing. Set a timer for 30 seconds, then pass the page to the left and add something to the drawing you've been handed. Keep going until the drawings come back to their owners, looking nothing like they started.

8. Finish my animal

One person draws the front half of an animal and folds the paper so only the middle shows. The other person draws the back half. A giraffe with a lobster's tail is a perfectly good result.

What should you do once the drawing is finished?

Ask about it before you praise it. Early-years specialists at Michigan State University Extension suggest open prompts like "Tell me about your picture" rather than "What is it?" The second one can leave a child feeling the drawing should have looked like something you'd recognise. If it's a keeper, write the date, their age and whatever they told you on the back.

Before long you'll have a pile. When you do, our guide to what to do with kids' artwork covers how to keep the best pieces without keeping every single one.

Frequently asked questions

What are 10 easy drawing ideas for kids?

A monster made of circles, the sun having a bad day, a very long snake, a house for a mouse, a fish in silly colours, balloons, what you ate for breakfast, a traced hand turned into an animal, a car that drives on the ceiling, and an animal that doesn't exist.

What should a 7-year-old draw?

Seven-year-olds like situations and stories. Try a robot doing chores, the inside of a dragon's backpack, their family as animals, or a pirate island map. Ask "what happens next?" when they finish, and a single drawing often turns into a comic strip.

How do I get my child interested in drawing?

Draw with them, badly, and laugh about it. Games like fold-over monsters and the squiggle game help because nobody's picture is meant to be good. Avoid correcting their drawings. Ask about their ideas instead of commenting on how realistic it looks.

What are fun drawing games for kids?

Fold-over monsters, the squiggle game, roll a monster, eyes-closed portraits, one-line drawing and draw-what-I-describe are all good ones. None of them need more than paper and pens, and they work well with mixed ages and with adults joining in.

Keep a stack of paper somewhere easy to reach, and a few of these prompts on the fridge. The next time you hear "I don't know what to draw," you'll have fifty answers ready.