Let's Doodle in Quarantine !

With current unfortunate situation worldwide, it's very important to keep ourselves and our children sane. We need to create opportunities within our home environment to engage our children constructively and creatively. Also, help them vent out their energies in the right direction.

So, I thought of sharing some activities with you all; which we are doing at home in addition to routine Virtual School Lessons. Apart from school lessons we really do not have a fixed schedule for Ms. A and I take lead from her mood and what she would want to engage herself with.

These are few things which we are doing:

1. First and foremost and the most obvious is READING. I am using this time to introduce multiple books & reading applications to Ms. A (I plan to do a detailed post on this, shortly).
2. Secondly, I am trying to get her do some physical activities. Though, we have severe restriction on this due to some limitations of housing structures in Japan. Therefore, we are using our apartment balcony to use Hoola Hoop, Squats, and some simple Yoga for Kids.
3. We are using some applications like Matific for Mathematics, Epic, Audible for Free Audio Stories & Katha with Karadi for Books, Amar Chitra Katha for Mythological Stories, Flocabulary for making some lessons interesting.
4. We are also having some fun time with Puzzles, Legos, Movies & some Kids Series on Amazon Prime ;)
5. Another interesting stuff which I am sharing in today's BlogPost is #Doodling. Since, Ms. A has interest in drawing and while I started looking up for some lessons online I found these 3 YouTube Channels. We have been following these 3 channels since last 2 weeks and learning #HowToDoodle. I felt all these offer very simple step-by-step instructions for children to follow without much complication.

So, here you go with the details for each and also some sample work of Ms. A what she worked upon while learning from these three sources.

1. #DrawWithRob (YouTube Channel)

Rob Biddulph is an internationally bestselling and multi award-winning children's author and illustrator. He is also the official World Book Day Illustrator for 2019, 2020 and 2021. His books include Blown Away, Odd Dog Out, Kevin and Show and Tell. 

In March 2020 he started #DrawWithRob, a series of twice-weekly draw-along videos designed to help parents whose children were forced to stay home from school due to the coronavirus pandemic.

I found this channel very good for the mere reason that the instructions are super simple, step-by-step and any child can follow with lot of ease. Also, the best part is that Rob is teaching children draw various characters which children can later compile together and build their own stories around these characters (adding their own personal touch to each of these characters).

Ms. A's version of #DrawWithRob

Find him on Twitter (@RobBiddulph), Instagram (@rbiddulph), Facebook (robbiddulphauthor), TikTok (RobBiddulph) and at his website: RobBiddulph.com.

Ms. A's version of #DrawWithRob

2. #MoLunchDoodles (YouTube Channel)

Around the world, people of all ages have joined Mo Willems in his studio for weekday LUNCH DOODLES. The three-week run, all 15 episodes and their downloadable activities, can be found on Kennedy Center Website (CLICK HERE). 

Ms. A enjoyed "Mo Willems" series a lot for the fact that he shared so much information about his books and the entire process he followed to put the illustrations for his books together. The videos are shot in his studio so he also gave tour of his studio to the children and discussed various steps involved in compiling a book together. He spoke about his studio assistant, his wife, played games, had a dress-up and also a graduation certificate for the children. All this made children connect so well with him, he even responded to the questions put up by children from all over the world. It was very fun, engaging and a learning session for Ms. A. I highly recommend this series for your child.

Ms. A's version of #MoLunchDoodles

Ms. A's version of #MoLunchDoodles

Ms. A's version of #MoLunchDoodles

3. #doodleacademy (YouTube Channel)

This channel I just bumped into while browsing the YouTube for #Doodling. Here you will find easy step-by-step instructions for how to draw simple cartoons. These seems to be good enough for children and beginners to follow.

So, from this channel Ms. A choose to work on Art which involved Water Colour Paints and she did the following two.

Hope, this posts helps you and your child some way. I will shortly be sharing more detailed reviews of other things we are doing. Till then Take Care, Stay Home & Stay Safe.