A recent facebook post caught my eye and warmed my heart. It was titled:
”Nine-year-old told not to doodle in class lands a job decorating restaurant with his drawings”.

Apparently young Joe from Shrewsbury in the UK happily filled pages and pages with his quirky creations, and an admiring teacher posted some images on social media. This caught the attention of a local business who then commissioned Joe to draw directly onto their walls each day after school. You can see his work underway in the pic below. Gorgeous eh?

Very few of us will have our creations celebrated as Joe did, but it’s great to make space in your home for your child to doodle and draw. And by that I do not mean you have to offer a wall! Keep a supply of drawing materials on hand, along with some paper. It doesn’t always have to be blank - recycle scraps of paper or the back of flyers, or even offer a whiteboard (you can simply photograph any images that you love before they are erased).

Drawing, scribbling and squiggling is a natural instinctive part of being human, and incredibly important to a child’s development.

As with reading, it’s really great to model drawing yourself, even if you are not the most confident artist. Plus drawing together can be a nice shared experience, and an opportunity to share stories. If you’re not quite sure how to start drawing together try my very favourite drawing game, inspired by a character from my childhood.

I know it shows my age, but I hold very fond childhood memories of a television character called Mr Squiggle. This funny fellow with a pencil shaped nose was a fixture on Australian children’s television for four decades. Skittery jittery Mr. Squiggle was a marionette who wobbled to earth each episode in a rickety rocket, then used his pencil nose to make marks onto a board to transform amorphous squiggles sent in by viewers into elaborately wonderful drawings.

Though the program ended before I was ever a parent, my children all know of Mr Squiggle because he inspired a fun family drawing game that we play to this day. Here’s how it works:

Mr Squiggle drawing game

1. provide each player with a piece of paper (or a whiteboard) and a different coloured texta (or crayon, pencil, pen)

2. give each player a couple of seconds to draw a squiggle on their page

3. swap the pages

4. look very carefully at the squiggle on your page. What do you see? It may help to rotate the page. What does it remind you of? What does it suggest?

5. using their own texta (in a different colour to the squiggle) extend that squiggle to create a new image

6. when both players are finished, share and tell the story of your drawing

7. repeat

Don’t feel self conscious - this game doesn’t rely on your drawing skills, but it does require you to be brave and have a go. Your drawing can be as silly or as simple as you like - most of the fun is the sharing the story of the drawings.

You’ll be surprised with what you both come up with! Have fun x