Picture Drawing Song · Elementary Music · Grades 1–6
Full lyrics, how to draw the pig step by step while you sing, and a complete teaching guide for grades 1–6. An American drawing song in the Ekaki Uta tradition — collected in Chicago in 2012, known nearly everywhere in the U.S. Tiri-tiri, ti-tiri, low ti, 2/4 meter, ABAC form.
Complete lyrics
How to draw the pig
Each phrase of the song tells you exactly what to draw. By the end of the song, you have a pig.
About this song
Songs that describe how to draw a picture are extraordinarily popular in Japan, where they're called Ekaki Uta (絵描き歌) — literally "picture-drawing songs." This American drawing song is almost certainly a variant of "The Teddy Bear Drawing Song," versions of which are found in Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Japan. This particular version was collected in Chicago in 2012, where nearly every child in the school already knew it. It seems to be known almost everywhere in the U.S.
The melody is almost identical to "Paw Paw Patch" — which means students who know that song can transfer immediately. The song itself is a complete musical teaching vehicle for several concepts that are otherwise difficult to isolate.
"The first two lines — 'little circle, little circle' — give you one of the cleanest examples of tiri-tiri in the whole repertoire. The rhythm fits the words exactly, and students are drawing while they sing it, which means they're feeling the pattern without thinking about it."
— Deborah Skydell Pasternack, The Singing ClassroomThe form is worth examining closely. The text is in AABC form (the first two lines are the same text, the third and fourth lines are new). But the melody is in ABAC form — the melody of the first line and the third line are the same, while the second and fourth lines have distinct melodies. Pointing out that text form and melodic form can differ is a genuinely rich musical conversation for grades 4–6.
For 2/4 meter, this song is a particularly clean example because it has no pick-ups — the meter is unambiguous from the first note. That makes it ideal for introducing or reinforcing 2/4 to students who need a clear, accessible example.
Teaching by grade
Draw the pig on the whiteboard yourself while students sing along. The drawing is too complex for this age to do independently, but watching the picture emerge while they sing is completely captivating. Focus on the singing, not the drawing.
Give each student paper and have them draw along while the class sings together. Have crayons or markers ready to color the pig when the drawing is done. The combination of singing and drawing keeps every student engaged and produces a tangible, personal result.
Teach this alongside several other drawing songs from the library — students find the concept fascinating and learn each new one quickly. Then challenge them: make a simple drawing of their own and invent a song about how to recreate it. This is a complete composing activity hidden inside a drawing game.
Extension activities
After drawing the pig, have students invent a story about it — the pig's name, where it's going, what it's doing that day, who its friends are. This moves naturally from music into language arts and gives every drawing a personality.
Challenge students (especially grades 4–6) to make a simple drawing and then write a song describing how to recreate it. The structure is clear enough that even younger students can compose within it — and the results are always surprising.
Common questions
The lyrics are: "Little circle, little circle, bigger circle / Little circle, little circle, bigger circle / Half circle, half circle, bigger circle / W, W, E, E, E." Each phrase tells you what to draw: the first two lines give you the eyes and the head, then the nostrils and snout. The half circles are the ears. The final bigger circle is the body. The W shapes make four legs, and the E shapes make the curly tail.
Ekaki Uta (絵描き歌) is a Japanese tradition of songs that describe how to draw a picture — "picture-drawing songs." They're extremely popular in Japan, and similar drawing songs exist throughout East and Southeast Asia. This American pig drawing song is almost certainly related to "The Teddy Bear Drawing Song," which has versions in Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Japan. The Chicago version collected in 2012 is an American folk variant of this international tradition.
Tiri-tiri (four sixteenth notes) appears in the first two lines — "little circle, little circle" fits the pattern perfectly. Each pair of "little circle" syllables maps onto four sixteenth notes. This makes the first two lines one of the cleanest examples of tiri-tiri in the elementary repertoire because the word stress aligns exactly with the rhythmic pattern. For ti-tiri (an eighth note followed by two sixteenth notes), look at "half circle" — the longer "half" lands on the eighth note, and "cir-cle" lands on the two sixteenth notes.
Low ti is the seventh scale degree below do — in solfège, it sits just below low la. In this song, low ti appears as part of a clearly outlined dominant chord. It's one of the less common pitches in the standard Kodály sequence, which makes this song useful for teachers who need a song to introduce or reinforce it. The dominant chord context makes the pitch feel grounded and logical rather than surprising.
The text repeats the first line exactly ("Little circle, little circle, bigger circle" appears twice), which gives the text an AABC structure. But the melody changes the second time those same words are sung — line 1 and line 3 share the same melody (A), while line 2 has a new melody (B) and line 4 has another new melody (C). This means text form and melodic form are different from each other: AABC vs ABAC. Pointing this out to grades 4–6 is a genuinely rich musical conversation about how words and music can organize themselves differently.
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See teaching guide →The real problem
Every teacher knows this feeling. You find a song, try it on Monday, and something goes sideways — the kids don't engage, you're not sure how to introduce it, the lesson loses momentum. It's not that the song was wrong. You just didn't have a clear picture of how it actually goes.
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