Interesting!
DD5 (almost) drew very elaborate people with distinct bodies, (i.e. not just a head with limbs sticking out), often 5 or more facial features, things like belly buttons, nipples, knee caps, elbows and ankles, etc.
She also drew with perspective. Things that were far away were smaller, closer larger. Looking at a person from above she would draw a circle for the head with two feet sticking out.
Her art work was getting pretty elaborate. I have some dated around 18 months when she was drawing letters and shapes pretty accurately and labeling them before she drew them. So not just lucking out that a scribble looked like something and then labeling it, but actually planning to draw something. And then what she drew increased in elaboration and skill as she got older, as I wrote above.
She started preschool at age 3 years and attended for about 1.5 semesters. During that time, she went from what I described previously to scribbling randomly - a far departure from what she had been doing. She then went through the stage of "blob" drawing with the facial features *mostly* floating in space and not drawn in the face, and is now *finally* starting to make people with more characteristics. Although, now her drawings are quite a bit more accurate. Then again, she now draws things she didn't tackle before - e.g Plankton, Patrick Star and SpongeBob.
I always wondered if this regression was significant. Does anyone know?
I thought it had to do with the fact that the majority of the children in her preschool class were still in the "blob" phase. Her teacher told me that the other kids' abilities had nothing to do with DD's change, because there was one boy in DD's morning class who drew very well for his age. He was 6 months older than DD and went 2 morning a week whereas she went 4 full days. So, I'm not sure I buy what the teacher said. This regression happened with most all of her skills and "Kids my age don't know how to do that!" became one of her favorite mantras. She also changed her speech, paragrahs with correct grammar became short sentences and her pronouns became confused.
She's starting to be more like she was before preschool. Still have some of the "Kids my age..." stuff going on, but there has been a definite improvement since we starting homeschooling (mostly unschool style).
Back to the OP: Yes my DD's drawing was very advanced for her age. (At least I think it was, I don't have a drawing benchmark list to refer to. Is there one in this thread? I haven't read through it, yet.) But then she went backward and is now pretty much where she is supposed to be - from what my friends have mentioned where their kids were at her age, anyway.
