Drawing Lessons For Kids

I recently picked up a book called 'Drawing with Children: A Creative Teaching and Learning Method That Works for Adults Too' by Mona Brookes and it is fantastic! 

She gives examples of the differences in children's drawings with 20 minutes of tuition, an hour of tuition etc... and it's really hard to believe. In all honesty I thought the pictures might be a little exaggerated.

I was wrong. 

But let me take you back a little. Initially, despite my concerns that the pictures were probably 'enhanced' by adults, I really liked reading the first chapter on how to conduct a drawing lesson. Simple things like pointing out symptoms of visual fatigue helped me realise why cosmo can do twenty math sheets with 40 questions on, but struggles to complete one with 100 (the font is too small). 

This week I asked Lychee if she wanted to do her own lesson with mummy. We spent all of approximately three minutes with her completing a drawing exercise from the book. I was actually quite impressed with her ability to copy. I've never asked her to before, so she usually just scribbles. 

Here is what she produced (mine in black, hers in yellow).

Not bad for a two year old, right?

She then went on to do her first ever recognisable drawing. It's a picture of her cousin.

I'm not going to pretend I knew who it was, but it is definitely a face! 

More interesting, is that since then, with no prompting, she has started colouring inside the lines. So when we made Daddy this card for Father's day, she would usually just scribble over my writing and picture. She took great pains this time to keep inside the heart.

Not only that, but she was able to draw X marks for kisses under her name. 

Both my kids, after a few minutes of 'teaching' went on to spend hours and hours the next day drawing hundreds of pictures using the symbols from the exercises we had done the day before. Their enthusiasm for drawing this week has been incredible. 

If anyone is wondering whether or not to buy this book, I highly recommend it. 

The Joy of Duplo

We've always loved duplo, and Cosmo got a ton of it for his birthday. Any toy that can be enjoyed by a 15 month old and four year old at the same time is always good, but one that can be used in so many different ways is an absolute God send.



Here are some of the uses we have found for it:

1. Building towers (obviously)


2. Sorting (by size and or colour)


3. Following instructions to build a specific item


4. Social stories (using the characters to act out situations we might encounter)


5. Counting/multiplication/subtraction/division


6. Pattern recognition


7. Building words (use dry wipe marker to write letters on blocks)


8. Building sentences (use dry wipe marker to write words on the blocks)

And I'm sure there are many more too. Please comment if you think of any I've missed.

Breakfast, starfall and the numberjacks

YBCR comes with a book to teach you child about shapes, that when we first looked at I nearly cried laughing. It seemed completely ridiculous to expect my baby to recognize 'special quadrilaterals' and 'irregular polygons', let alone the difference between a rhombus and a trapezoid.

We decided that an easier way to teach shapes would be to cut his toast into simple shapes (square, triangle, rectangle) and explain it to him that way.

How wrong was I.

Within a week Cosmo was asking me if his toast could be a hexagon or an oval. In fact he even knew that my 'diamond' shape offering was a trapezoid. Turns out kids are much more capable than I have previously given them credit for.

This was proven to me again when we introduced the 'starfall' website to our playtime (www.starfall.com). Cosmo very quickly picked up not only the names of the letters and whether they were 'big' letters or 'small' letters, as well as the sound they make. Starfall is a fun interactive website that I can't recommend highly enough if you haven't tried it. My neices love it too.

The numberjacks is also a fun and educational program. We don't let Cosmo watch much TV, but he loves the numberjacks.
It can be watched free on the cbeebies website. It explains things in such a simple and fun way. After watching one episode Cosmo understood simple fractions (halves, thirds and quarters) and asks for his toast to be cut in this way. Amazing.

By the way, if you want to go down the toast cutting route, scissors are the way forward. There is no way you can accurately cut shapes with a knife, no matter how sharp it is. Believe me I've tried. Cosmo's look of disgust at the mangled toast was really enough to make me get the scissors out next time.