This Friday Kim and Mary share several of their favorite activity art books they have used over the years. Whether you have a 4 year old or a 12 year old, there is an idea for you!
Don't forget to check out more of our Friday Favorite ideas on previous episodes, and we would love to have you subscribe and like our podcast!
For more info and resources, go to The Speech Source, and follow us on Istagram @thespeechsource.
Also, if you haven't done so already, follow our podcast! You will be the first to know when new episodes release. We would also love for you to leave a review and rate our show. The Speech Source appreciates your feedback and support! Follow here!
This Friday Kim and Mary share several of their favorite activity art books they have used over the years. Whether you have a 4 year old or a 12 year old, there is an idea for you!
Don't forget to check out more of our Friday Favorite ideas on previous episodes, and we would love to have you subscribe and like our podcast!
For more info and resources, go to The Speech Source, and follow us on Istagram @thespeechsource.
Also, if you haven't done so already, follow our podcast! You will be the first to know when new episodes release. We would also love for you to leave a review and rate our show. The Speech Source appreciates your feedback and support! Follow here!
Welcome to Friday Favorites. This is where we get together and talk about some of our favorite books, activities, art, toys and ways that we use them for speech and language, either with our own kids or when we're in speech therapy sessions. So today, mary and I both brought it's kind of a combo art and books, but they're different activity books that we love for kids. So, mary, what did you bring?
Speaker 2:
Okay. So I brought my first Learn to Draw series because I think it's awesome to learn to draw and a lot of times kids want to draw more things than they're really capable of drawing and they're always saying, well, can you draw me this or can you draw? And it's a great thing to do. So I have the Learn to Draw Baby Animals. I would say this is a really good first one. Learn to draw farm animals a little bit more advanced. And then we do also have the Learn to Draw Bible stories. If that's something that your family is into, that's a great one too. Learn to draw is an amazing way to work on following directions, you know. So it's really. It's got these great scenes like a rabbit, and so it starts first draw circle. Then they're going to have more steps, so you have to kind of talk about where to start it or what to draw, and so you're going to go to each step and you can do it with a dry erase marker.
Speaker 1:
I was going to say that dry erase.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's all dry erase. Yeah, we love dry erase, and so you can do dry erase right here. It's super easy to just erase when you mess up, or if you're not quite to that level yet, because this is such a good thick book, you can just put a piece of printer paper over it and trace it. So that's my little hack for this one too, but it's a really cute way to work on. Directions and drawing is really difficult, and so obviously you can get as technical as you want with this learning to draw, but I think that this is a really good activity for kids that they can do solo or they can do with you. It's just one that's really rewarding, and I also, like my kids, really enjoy YouTube as well to learn to draw. I'll link it, but there's this dad that draws with his little girl and that's another really good one that you can do in addition to these wifeable ones is learning to draw and going step by step, and there you're just like pausing the video, but that's a great activity as well.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and then you get well the animal vocabulary. And then if you have older kids who want to create a scene where they're combining animals or even adding to, that's just a really neat way to go above what the book is starting with, you can add to it. It's a great one.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, well, what did you bring him?
Speaker 1:
So we're about to leave for a road trip tomorrow and these are all three books that three different aged kids are bringing. So I thought it was appropriate for today because I have a five year old who is taking one of hers, a nine year old and a 12 year old, so we kind of have a span of ages. But I'm going to start with the five year old. It's the fabulous activity book. This is kind of older book, but I was looking online to see what they have and they have the amazing activity book. So there's different ones. If I can't find the exact ones, I know Walmart and Amazon had different. Like they have a princess one, a uniform one, a pirate one and instead of fabulous it said the pirate activity book. But it's the same concept but it's for a little bit younger ages.
Speaker 1:
There's stickers for my daughter who isn't reading yet and is just now starting to do some of the drawing for the letters and numbers. It'll be great because it'll have a sticker page. She has to complete the scene using stickers and there's no right or wrong, there's just different color pages. It will have some animal magic. You can either finish creating the faces or find matches, some simple mazes, and then they have. See, here's another. This is King One stickers and it'll tell you which page to do. There's all kinds of different things. Clearly, you know, in the garden you can create a garden scene. We've basically just handed the book over to her and let her. There's doodles and flowers, so you've got to draw.
Speaker 2:
My daughter would love that too.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and she's six and a half, and then you do have a word search. So I do think that we can go up to six, seven, eight and it can grow. You know she's not gonna do the word search right now, but maybe next year she'll be ready for the word search. But right now there's plenty for her to do Coloring in. Right here here it is drawing a ballerina. So it's for a little bit of an older child and I love that they can just pick what grabs them.
Speaker 2:
You know that if they're feeling like they want a little bit of a challenge or if they want something easy, they have everything in there.
Speaker 1:
Right, and here's kind of like a little detective page that has a story where you have to get a clue and find out what happens down here. So it's a broad range, but this is definitely the one that's for the youngest child, because I feel like it has those sticker scenes and just some color scenes. So the next one step by step drawing but, I'm really liking your dryer race there.
Speaker 1:
but if you're not there, this is for my nine year old and he uses it all the time. You can see that right here. And then what's great is he did the cat and then he went over here and drew it multiple times. There was a cat on a fence and then he kind of tried to freestyle. He's fancy over there.
Speaker 2:
Oh, I love that. And then you kind of see all the different attempts. You see them get better.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you see here that we didn't try too hard, and so I love it. I'm trying to find another one. Here's a card.
Speaker 2:
Oh, that's good.
Speaker 1:
That's good. There's so many and I still have a lot of blank pages, so he's taking this one. Here's a dart, and then you can do a whole other scene over here. So that's what I like. They can practice it here and then move over here.
Speaker 2:
And try to draw a scene. And isn't it interesting how drawing really reflects their personality. A lot of just some kids. All they want is blank paper. And then other kids. That is just too much for them. They really like a little more structure, a little more direction on what to do. Right.
Speaker 1:
So this is for it's my nine-year-old that's using that one, and then my 12-year-old.
Speaker 1:
This is totally awesome. Mazes and puzzles this is a little bit more of the word. Searches there are some math games in here. Let's see here's kind of just a search and find there are mazes. Let me find there's a dance off, so you watch the sequence of dances and then on the last little box you get to create your own dance move. There's some where you have to kind of complete the word fill in the letters. But I also like it'll have a section there's dots to dots in here, but then there's an answer page. Here's some of the mazes. They're just really fun and colorful and bright.
Speaker 2:
Pages. Well, and I feel like this book could last you to your destination, at your destination and back from it. So they haven't exhausted all of it yet, right.
Speaker 1:
Here's some of the math games. In here there's a little bit of everything, so if they get bored of math they can go do a maze or they can do a word search. This is actually something that we kind of keep and pull out only when we travel because it's something new, that they're excited to get back, and I think at one point I think it's probably someone else. You know my current 12 year old had this one and now he's on this one.
Speaker 1:
So these are great. These are fun little activity and if it's too much, you can go through and pull four or five pages that you think Are going to be good pages for your child. Put them on a clipboard and let them do that in the car or at home, or hey, we're gonna do these for 30 minutes, let's play with two of these. So if this is too much, pull out a couple pages and look and try it. So those are great. We'll link all of these in our podcast notes and hope that you find something that you enjoy doing with your family and can work on some Speech and Language.