Monster Doodles For Kids

I have written many posts about C's love of drawing.  Lately, R has been drawing quite a bit too.  They spend a lot of their spare time drawing at the kitchen table.  They both enjoy doodle books that encourage them to complete pictures according to directions, so they were thrilled to review Monster Doodles For Kids by Chris Sabatino.

I love the size of this book because it is big enough to draw in, but small enough to carry in a purse or backpack.  C and R love the pages.  Some of the fun drawing directions are:  "Create a candy bar only a dinosaur would like,"  "What do ogres have for breakfast?," "Design the scariest Halloween costume ever," and "Draw the guts of this mechanical monster".  This book offers over two hundred pages of creative drawing prompts that will be great fun for monster lovers.

This book is recommended for ages eight and up.  C is seven and R is five and a half (that half is important to her!), and they both enjoy the book.  C (the biggest monster lover in the house) is definitely hooked on this book, and has already completed about half of the pages.  Even T (the fourteen year old in the house) has been spotted thumbing through the book and expressing interest in drawing his own monster details.

Chris Sabatino, the author/artist, was kind enough to send us two books (one for C and one for R) in exchange for an honest review.  I have to say that my children are having a lot of fun with it and they both recommend the book.  They also agree that this book is fun any time of year, not just for Halloween!!

Click here to purchase Monster Doodles For Kids by Chris Sabatino!  Click here to visit Chris Sabatino's blog where you can learn more about him, his art, and his books!

A Baby or a Smiley Face?

C drew this recently.  Do you see the blue peanut shape in the middle?  That is supposed to be the baby in my belly! 

He drew it so that when you turn the paper, you see a smiley face instead of a baby!

Do you see the blue eyes and the red smiling mouth? 

Pretty clever!

My Garden

My Garden by Kevin Henkes begins with a young girl helping her mother in the garden.  She waters, weeds, and chases away rabbits.  Then she imagines her very own garden where she will grow chocolate rabbits, tomatoes as big as beach balls, jelly bean bushes, and flowers that change color.  This book is simply delightful.

C and R imagined and drew their own gardens:

R's garden grows happy carrots, a flower that shoots petals and grows polka dots, and a dinosaur wearing a cherry dress.  The blue squiggles at the top are birds.

C's garden was inspired by his current obsession with the game Plants vs. Zombies.  I knew before we began that he would be inspired by the game.  He looks forward to the weekend when he can play for a little while, and during the week he makes up his own games that stem from Plants vs. Zombies.  In his drawing, you can see sunflowers, a "chomper", a corn stalk, a walnut growing, cherries, pea shooters, and a hill with a watermelon patch.  The red door leads to a house where the gardeners live, and you can see a little red lawnmower in the lower left corner.  Luckily, there are no zombies in this garden because they gave up when they saw the plants.

So, if you had an imaginary garden, what would you grow?  I'm quite certain that my garden is going to grow waffle cones of cranberry bog ice cream (cranberry ice cream with walnuts and chocolate chips) - I LOVE this local treat!

Silly Bands Storytelling

Are your children quite literally up to their elbows in Silly Bands?  C and R have a bunch; I think they multiply while we are sleeping.  Anyway, C began using them for storytelling this week.  It was one of those proud mommy moments because it was all his idea and all I did was watch.  I thought I would share what he did so that you can try this with your kids.

He was inspired by the cowboy shaped bracelets from his collection.  He began by sorting them.

Then he drew a few pictures and added the bracelets to the completed drawings.

At this point, he invited me to listen to his story.  Here it is:

     First, the four cowboys got dressed.  Then they rode around on their horses.  They found a bull and they ran away.  Then they saw a bull fight.  The strongest bull won.  He got a trophy.


If your child is not inspired to create his or her own story revolving around Silly Bands, sit down with your child and a few of the bracelets and begin telling the story yourself.  Then encourage him to add something to the story, or even draw a picture to illustrate the story.

*I know that the brand name is actually "Silly Bandz".  As a former English teacher, it really bugs me when companies purposely spell words incorrectly.  

Squiggle Drawings

I'm a copycat this week.  I saw these squiggle drawings on the Just Playin' Around blog a couple weeks ago and I knew it would be a hit with my kids.  Well, it was a home run!  We have been making squiggle drawings all week!  One of us will draw a little squiggle and then challenge another family member to make something out of that squiggle.  This is a great idea for waiting rooms and restaurants! 

The idea for squiggle drawings came from the book, Star of the Week by Barney Saltzberg.  The main character is star of the week in his class and shares some of his favorite things with his classmates.  It doesn't go so well in the beginning, but when Stanley's love of drawing results in squiggle drawings, the entire class wants to make their own squiggle drawings.

This is a great book, and I love the lesson that is incorporated in the story line - "It's really important that you finish what you start."  When things were not going well, Stanley wanted to give up and stop sharing his favorite things, but his teacher encouraged him to continue. 

Here are two drawings C and R created from squiggles I drew:

Go ahead and try squiggle drawings; I bet your whole family will have fun!

Now, go visit A Mommy's Adventures and check out the other  stArt (story + art = a great start) projects!

A Whale and a Mermaid

I love this drawing by R.  She drew a whale and a mermaid (can you see them?) in the ocean. 

A New Ride for Disney World

C chose to learn about the state of Florida because he LOVES Disney World.  It is his favorite place in the world, and the one thing he really wanted to do as part of this project was to design a ride for the park. 

I scanned in his drawing.  C described the ride to me:  The ride is called "The Godzilla and King Kong Washout" and it is a water roller coaster.  On the left, you can see King Kong holding Ann Darrow, and when you go by him, he tries to take you out of the roller coaster!  Down in the valley is Godzilla.  He swings his tail at the roller coaster cars and sprays water out of his mouth.  The water has food coloring in it to look like fire.  At the very top is Godzilla's head; when you go by his head, water drips down on you.  The green army men shoot bullets, but they are not real. You get really, really wet on this ride because there is a huge splash at the end and there is very cold water too.

Yesterday, C found out that there are people who actually design Disney World rides for a living.  He is so excited about this and has added it to his list of future careers.  In case you were wondering, he also wants to be an illustrator, a movie director, and a Kindergarten teacher. 

Circles

Challenge your child to draw something using only one shape and see what he or she comes up with.  If I had to draw something using only circles, I would draw a snowman.  C obviously has much more creativity in his little five year old self than I do!

He even made the mouth out of circles.  I was very impressed. 

If you try this with your child, please let me know what he or she creates!

Scratch and Sketch

C got a Pirates Scratch and Sketch book for Christmas and he is close to filling up all of the pages already. This book is so neat. It has ten black-coated gold and silver glitter pages and ten black-coated rainbow swirl pages.


There are also twenty drawings of pirate life with informative text about pirates, and twenty regular paper pages for doodling.

The book also comes with a wooden stylus for drawing. You can see it in C's hand. Have you used scratch paper before? C is loving it!

*We have not been compensated in any way to write about this product. It is just something that C loves.

Oh, Star of Wonder

This is the first picture of all three of my children in our new home. It's not the best picture but I love the way they were all working at the table together. They sat at the kitchen table for the longest time. T was teaching C and R how to draw a star.


They were both so excited to learn how to do this. Drawing a star is not easy but now they have this sample to look at anytime they want to draw a star.

Santa Turkey

C drew this turkey wearing a Santa hat. I love it.

We are packing!

Slowly, but surely we are getting ready for our move. The big day is quickly approaching. R decided that our boring brown boxes needed some color and decoration.

All moving boxes should have happy faces on them!

A Drawing by C

I love this drawing by C. He told me he was drawing things from the Bible. In case you didn't know, that is God looking down on all that he created.

Drawing

C has been drawing a lot lately. Last Friday, he started drawing just after 3:00 and only stopped to eat and sleep. He has a few sketchbooks that he likes to draw in, but he also has a pretty cool coloring/drawing book that he really enjoys. What kind of blogger would I be if I didn't tell you about this cool book?


The book is titled, Scribbles: A Really Giant Drawing and Coloring Book by Taro Gomi. The difference between this book and a typical coloring book is that the pictures on the pages are just the beginning. They are designed to spur creative thinking. One page has a drawing of a tree and instructs the artist to fill it with leaves. There are pages with shapes drawn on them, and the artist is supposed to create something out of the shapes. The book has over 300 pages, so I could go on and on with these examples. C loves this book. He has filled more than half of the pages with his art.

(The directions on this page instruct the artist to draw fireworks.)

If you have a child that is always asking you what he or she should draw, this book will solve that problem. The only problem with this book is that a pre-reader will have to ask you what he or she is supposed to do on each page. This doesn't bother me, but if you want your child to be entertained while you are busy, this may not be the right book.

Noah's Ark

C loves the story of Noah's ark. We recently found some Noah's Ark foam stickers at A.C. Moore. C was very excited to create his interpretation. The yellow marks at the top of the page are lightning, the black dots are hail (he insists there was hail), and the blue lines are rain. Notice the tree on the right side of the paper; he said that a tree was lifted up out of the ground during the storm and landed on the ark. He has quite the imagination.