Listen-and-draw activities are excellent practice for your students to learn how to follow directions, pay attention to detail, and use their imagination to create a picture. These activities are also great for teaching ESL- English as a Second Language! Read on to find 25 incredible listen-and-draw activities that you can complete with your learners in preschool, elementary school, and beyond!
Preschool Activities
1. Listen and Color
This preschool listen-and-color activity is a great way for your little ones to practice identifying colors and learning color-related vocabulary. They’ll follow various oral directions like “color the base of the globe stand orange” and use colored pencils or crayons to fill in the picture.
Learn More: Ohio 4H
2. Animals Listen and Color
Preschoolers love animals, so they’ll love this cool listen-and-color resource! Your kiddos will have to identify each animal by using their active listening skills before coloring the animals in the correct sequence.
Learn More: YouTube
3. Online Listen and Learn Color Game
Let your kiddies practice their listening and digital skills at the same time with this next one! It’s a pre-made digital activity with 11 slides that require them to listen to and follow the step-by-step directions to color in the pictures. It may say something like, “Number 4 is green” and they’ll have to click on the correct paint can; it’s a chance to test their color knowledge!
Learn More: Teachaboo
4. Listen and Color Through The Year
Looking for more than one listen-and-color activity? This bundle provides various resources for you to use throughout the year based on themed listening practice. We love that it has some single-step and multi-step directions so that you can provide scaffolds for your learners!
Learn More: Inspired Elementary
5. Count and Draw
Directed drawings are an excellent way for your kiddos to build their academic skills like counting, identifying shapes and colors, etc. As you describe a cute scene, you can challenge your little artists to add the correct number of animals on a tree or clouds in the sky.
Learn More: Empowered Parents
6. Vocabulary Builders
Gru Languages has several fun drawing activities for building vocabulary around a theme, like body parts or things you see at the beach. These printables are perfect for your young students or English language learners as they include target terms and a video for them to listen to and color along with.
Learn More: Gru Languages
Lower Elementary Activities
7. Listen and Draw Matching
This student-led activity has two different versions for various levels of students. This cat freebie worksheet is an excellent way for your elementary kiddos to practice reading, listening, and fine motor skills at the same time! They’ll have to draw lines to connect different images in the correct order.
Learn More: Your Therapy Source
8. Responding With Art
Stimulate your learners’ creative side with music and art! Kids love to listen to music, so why not give them a piece of paper and have them paint what they imagine from the song? It’s a calm activity with free creative expression!
Learn More: Artful Parent
9. Preposition Listen & Draw
Prepositions can be difficult to teach to ESL learners, so we chose this resource to help you! On this printable, they’ll be tasked with drawing certain images above, below, or next to other images. This worksheet will also help teach your kiddies fine motor skills, how to follow directions and various vocabulary words!
Learn More: Top Teacher
10. Lunch Doodles With Mo Willems
If you need a quick and engaging activity, check out the Kennedy Center’s Lunch Doodles with author-illustrator Mo Willems! In this video series, Mo will teach your students how to draw his famous characters, like Knuffle Bunny, the Pigeon, or Gerald and Piggie! All they’ll need to do is listen closely and follow each step!
Learn More: YouTube
11. Monthly Draw-Along
This monthly draw-along calendar will help you track the growth in your students’ listening skills. Each month has a fun picture to go with a featured holiday or season, like a beach scene for the summer or a leprechaun for St. Patrick’s Day! You’ll call out directions for how to color in each image and the result will show you just who’s listening and who isn’t!
Learn More: Teaching In the Tongas
12. Read, Write, and Draw
This collaborative activity from Cambridge is perfect for your upper elementary students as well as English language learners. Split your class into groups of three, then instruct one student to read a sentence, while another writes it down, and a third draws it. They’ll each play their part with one sentence, then change roles until everyone has practiced each skill!
Learn More: Cambridge
13. Drawing the Big Green Monster
This fun draw-along activity pairs with the book Go Away, Big Green Monster! Your learners will have to use their listening skills to draw the Big Green Monster’s face as the story describes it. As they listen and draw, they’ll also be demonstrating their knowledge of colors, lines, and body parts.
Learn More: The Lemonade Stand Teacher
Upper Elementary Activities
14. Draw a Monster
This creative drawing and listening activity is exactly what your elementary students need to focus them before a lesson! Place your learners in pairs and have one read aloud the details about the monster while the other one draws the monster. Once finished, your class can compare their drawings with their monsters; they should be similar if they all follow the directions!
Learn More: Busy Teacher
15. Draw Along With Art for Kids Hub
We cannot recommend this channel enough; you’ll love it just as much as your kiddies! The Art for Kids Hub channel on YouTube has thematic drawing activities for almost every season or unit! As they follow along, your students will build skills on developing their artistic perspective, learn to follow multi-step directions, and end up with adorable drawings at the end!
Learn More: YouTube
16. A Piece of Cake
This drawing activity teaches your kids how important it is to be specific when writing directions. Your kiddies will listen to you recite a fun passage about a piece of cake, drawing along as directed. In the end, they can check to see how close their pictures are to their peers! What a fun way to teach them such an important lesson about writing instructions!
Learn More: Teach Starter
17. Draw-Along With Dapo Adeola
Older elementary students will love to draw along with this real illustrator, Dapo Adeola, who created all the characters in the book Look Up! Along the way, Adeola shares bits about what he loves about his profession and inspires children to express themselves through their own creations! Your kids will love learning to draw from this amazing illustrator!
Learn More: YouTube
18. All Are Welcome Character Drawings
The aspiring illustrators in your class will love this one! In this video activity, your children will listen to a read-aloud of All Are Welcome, and then receive a drawing lesson from illustrator Suzanne Kaufman! She’ll teach your viewers how she illustrated each character in the story, teaching important lessons about what makes us the same and different along the way.
Learn More: Facebook
Middle and High School Activities
19. ESL Listen and Draw
The ESL listen-and-draw book is an excellent resource for your ESL and EFL classes. Your students will use active listening and comprehension skills to draw the new vocabulary words that you call out from the instructions.
Learn More: Scribd
20. Grid Game
The grid game is excellent for your middle and high schoolers to learn communication strategies. The instructions are told in a narrative fashion about a group of kids going to summer camp. Your students will be challenged to pay attention to details as they move their pencils into each box and add the details of the story to their grid!
Learn More: Teach For Teach
21. Draw This
This activity, Draw This, has a twist in which your learners must collaborate with each other as they follow the instructions. To set up, get your kids to sit in a circle, each with their own paper and pencil, and then you’ll give oral single-step directions. After they complete each one, they’ll pass their paper to the person next to them and after ten rounds, the final results will be an interpretation of how each student follows directions!
Learn More: The High Schooler
22. Dictated Drawing
Dictated drawing is a super fun student-led activity that puts your learners’ listening skills to the test! To begin, have each of your kids draw a picture without showing it to their partner. Then, they’ll have to explain how to draw it as the other person attempts to follow their directions.
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
23. Draw What You Hear
This is a great listening activity for your older students to practice their creative expression while gaining an appreciation for instrumental pieces of music. Use the playlist from the Denver Philharmonic and have them express themselves by drawing the mental images that the music makes them think of.
Learn More: Denver Philharmonic
24. Oompa Loompa Drawings
Famed illustrator Quentin Blake drew the instantly recognizable pictures to accompany all of Roald Dahl’s fantastical stories. This short video showcases his illustrations and his process, which your children can draw along with as they watch!
Learn More: Puffin Schools
25. Drawing Holst’s Planets
Widen your older learners’ musical horizons as they take on this listening activity! Gustav Holst’s famous musical pieces–The Planet Suites–include many different tempos, moods, and rhythms that can inspire your students’ art. Print off some empty planet coloring pages and let your students decorate the blank planets in the way that the music inspires them to!
Learn More: YouTube
67 1st Grade Art Projects: Coloring, Painting, Crafting, Drawing, And More