Draw Yourself Yours

Decorating your traced body is a fun activity for people of all ages.  If this activity is done once a year or so for your children, it can be fun to hang up their past tracings and let them notice how tall they're getting, how funny their decorating job was when they were 3, or how their interests have changed over the years.

Materials:

Craft Paper (It's sometimes referred to a butcher paper too) This comes in a roll.  I found my most recent roll at Michael's for under $5.  One roll is enough to trace two adults and a child, or 4-5 children.

A Pencil

Scissors

Your choice of decorating medium: crayons, markers, stickers, colored paper, ribbons, cloth, yarn, anything you can think of.

Instructions:

Roll out the craft paper on the carpet-less floor (preferably a clean floor).  You need to roll out and cut enough paper for the person you're tracing to lay on. 

This person should lay on his or her back and arrange their limbs flat on the paper in a position that they would like to have traced (and one that doesn't make impossible to be traced).  For example, if you're son likes to play football, perhaps he'd like to be traced "throwing" (but he can draw or glue on a ball later).

A little hint about the feet:  In my experience, these come out looking like they got caught in a food processor if you aren't careful.  I would advise laying the persons foot to the side and flat when you get to this part.  Just try to be aware of what the feet are looking like as you trace them and have an eraser handy, unless you are going for the stuck-my-foot-in-a-blender look.

The last step is to decorate.  Draw or glue clothes on, add objects that are special to that person, glue on hair, add accessories.  This part is really up to the decorator.  

If you have the wall space somewhere, proudly display your tracings.