How do you teach a 4-year-old to draw?
Sit beside your child rather than across from them, draw one line on your own paper, wait for them to copy it, then draw the next. Keep the whole drawing under six lines. Do not sketch guidelines, do not erase, and do not correct what they produce.
Why one line at a time works
A four-year-old cannot hold a whole picture in their head and work towards it. They can, however, copy one shape they are looking at right now. Breaking a drawing into single lines converts an impossible task into six easy ones.
It also removes the moment where a child looks at a half-finished drawing, decides it is going badly, and gives up. If the only thing on the table is "draw this one curve", there is nothing to judge yet.
Sit beside them, not opposite
Facing your child means they see everything mirrored, which is genuinely hard at this age. Sitting on the same side — or drawing on the same sheet — removes a problem they cannot articulate and you will not notice.
What to say when it goes wrong
When a line comes out crooked, the instinct is to say "try again". Do not. Say what the line is for instead: "that is the ear, now the other one". A crooked ear is still an ear, and the drawing keeps moving.
Skip erasers entirely at this age. Erasing teaches that a drawing can be wrong. Children who never learn that keep drawing for years longer.
How long a session should be
Five to ten minutes. One drawing, finished, then stop while they still want more. Two short sessions in a week beat one long one, and a child who finished something last time comes back willingly.
Where Draw Along fits
If you would rather not draw alongside them, Draw Along does the same thing on a tablet — one line appears on screen at a time, your child traces it with a finger, and the next line only shows up once they have drawn the current one. There is nothing to erase and no way to fail a step.