My kids love a good colouring in session.
Me? I’m not so keen on colouring in books.
I’d rather see my kids drawing and creating freely, not constrained by the ideas or thick black lines of other people. Even so, colouring in has found it’s place in our family, despite my misgivings, but when the big kids asked me to print out some colouring pages on the weekend, I had a better idea.
A long time ago I bookmarked this post from the Artful Parent – Two of our favorites: Leaf drawing and Simon Says
I knew my big kids would love the idea of ‘simon says’ drawing, and indeed they do, but the post gave me another idea and Sunday was the day to try it out.
I braved the crazy hot weather and ventured outside to collect a basket of leaves, some grass and some flowers and bought them inside.
The kids thought I was nuts when I started arranging some leaves on the scanner, but they watched in wonder as the image from the scanner appeared on the screen and was then printed out.
I dumped a collection of images on the table with the markers and crayons and waited to see what would happen.
It didn’t take them long to see all kinds of possibilities from the images I’d created. They drew fairies living under leaf trees and made people out of leaves.
Then we got a little crazy and started scouring the house for flat things we could arrange and scan. We tried wooden mosaic pieces, puzzle shapes, glow in the dark stars, threading buttons, string, paper, shells. We even tried putting material over our arrangements to make different backgrounds.
The kids discovered what happened when you let light into the scanner and began creating their own scanned scenes with definite ideas of what they would add later with the markers.
Make Your Own Scanned Drawing Prompts
All you need is a scanner and a collection of flat-ish odds and ends. Arrange your odds and ends on the scanner, make sure you leave some blank space for some drawings, scan and then print the scanned image.
What items would you use to make your scanned drawing prompts?
What a lovely idea, I think I might try these with my baby and his cousins. I have also collected little bits of nature for them to turn into what I called environmental monsters. Where they would glue them to paper add stick on eyes + draw arms, legs, wings or whatever and a little monster would appear.
very cute
Another wonderful idea Kate – thanks for this, will give this a go for sure. I borrowed your word collage idea last night for my 5 yo (https://picklebums.com/2011/11/29/easy-art-for-kids-letter-collage/). It was a big hit. He had such a great time showing off what he’s learnt in PP this year. He took the paper in to show his teacher this morning – he was just about bursting with excitement.
WOW ! that is AMAZING ! so effective ! love it ! thanks :) Lauren
What a lovely idea – my boys would love this!
This is such an awesome idea. Off to post it on Facebook!!! We have done this with real materials (not the scan) where the kids glue on nature collections and draw around them. One of these days I will get a picture up on the blog with it. I like the Simon Says idea as well. Have you heard of the draw and tell activities? You could adapt activities to work with your age children so they could do the draw and tell – here is an example http://www.heidisongs.com/Free_Downloads/assets/The_Curious_Little_Mouse.pdf
This is brilliant! I love drawing games and prompts and can’t wait to try this with my 3.5 year old. When my daughter was 2, we had a lot of fun simply scanning objects, and now that she’s older and LOVES to draw, this would be a fun extension. Off to share with my readers and collect little objects. xo
Ooh I really like that, such a simple but clever idea.
Love it! So simple – will definitely try with my 3 yr old soon – hope it’s okay to share on my A Little Creative facebook page :)
sure… share away :)
I adore this idea. My kids loooove to get creative. Sadly I don’t have a scanner anymore but I’m sure we can think of a way around that!
I reckon you could arrange things on a white piece of paper, take a photo, and then print that out maybe?
Or just a regular photocopy?
Thank you for sharing this Kate. Just fabulous. I wonder if our scanner will be good enough. Yours looks like a very good quality one. Not sure if the colour will be great, but will definitely give it a go. Thanks again.
Our scanner is just the one that is part of our cheap multi function printer. I have a really awesome scanner but it is in storage while we renovate… but this one did fine.
You’ll find things that are not so flat can go a little out of focus, you can sharpen them with photo editing software if you want, but I found my kids didn’t mind the fuzziness at all.
Have fun
Brilliant. Will do. One day.
Kate — this is a great idea. I am going to try it this week. We are in need of some more fun art project ideas!
Wow, this is such an amazing and creative idea! Cannot wait for my little girl to be old enough for this!
OMG this idea is just so cool, I so want to try it out!
Thanks for sharing
Another super idea, I love visiting your site!! :o)
We have been playing with some autumn leaves this weekend and this has given me some inspiration to start scanning them.
Thank you so much for sharing – off to start scanning :o)!!
This is a wonderful post. It reminds me of sun prints,too. Thanks for sharing!