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| 'Perry the cute-a-pus' drawn by Miss K using kidsfront.com |
Both Piwis love to draw and paint. Miss K wanted to learn more. Unfortunately, both her parents have limited artistic abilities and NZ Grandma isn't able to fly 10000 miles for a lesson.
There are art classes in the area but we aren't able to commit to much this summer with the possibility of a move. I did what I usually do...turned to google.
I found some great sites that you can use to draw with your mouse or graphic pen -saves the cost of software and the risk of downloading dodgy applications!
A caveat though, I learnt that not all of these are kid appropriate. Some require you to log in with an account so you can store the images and they have galleries of images that other people have created. Some of these are not G rated. The sites we liked...
Online Sketch pad is not specially for kids but the few user submitted examples are chosen by the site to be 'ok'.
Picturedraw is an doodle pad. It is fairly basic and you can save images to your computer. There are no user images on the site, but there are some google ads.
free-draw by Nick Jr, is for younger kids but still a lot of fun, you can print the art work
Paint Go! This is similar to the Nick Jr site, but may be preferred by kids who don't want the Nick Jr themes
What Miss K really wanted was something to teach her how to draw different animals etc. Google delivered!
Billybear 4 kids has written lessons about drawing, an art pad, clip art...They have a lot of things about Internet security on the site itself and some lessons for kids to be safe on the Internet. I was however, not so thrilled with some of the banner advertising that popped up in the visits we made. I got wise though and just bring up the site that Miss K wants and then refresh it until a G rated one comes up before she begins her lesson. (wow who would have thought I'd be worried about ten years ago!).
kidsfront.com was Miss K's favorite. The how to draw section step by step drawing lessons. It doesn't require any reading like Billy Bear so younger kids could follow the visual steps. It too has several ads.
Miss K has enjoyed herself so much she now wants me to find lessons for unicorns, clothes and shoes..oh Google!....
