Every two year old
draws curved or straight lines, but it is not until about
the age of three that a child draws the simple structure of
a sun. A sun is a circle with lines coming out of it. This
shape emerges from children's drawings of
mandalas. The picture on the
right shows some pictures of suns, with lines crossing the
circle, drawn by three and four year
olds.
Children do not call this shape a sun unless an adult or a peer has told them that it is one. They are not drawing a sun, rather they are experimenting with shapes. Children will sometimes call it a "spider".
Around the age of three and four children begin to name their shapes that they draw. This naming is an important step in the development of the child's abstract thought. By naming the shapes the child shows an understanding of the lines and shapes as symbols that stand for things that have similar characteristics to the things the child knows.
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