Doodle Activity

Have you heard of the doodling exercise 'take your pencil for a walk'? My Mum introduced me to it and I used to do it all the time as a kid. You draw all over a piece a paper, keeping the pencil on the page the whole time and crossing over to make loops. Then you can just colour in the sections, or fill each part with a different pattern.

One of the kids art sessions this week was all about creating colourful patterns so I thought I'd start with this activity. 

I gave the children A3 paper as the A4 (which I'd used for mine) looked too small. I thought it would be easier for them to fill the sections if they were a bit bigger. But to my surprise most of the children filled their sections with tiny, detailed patterns, meaning they didn't all have time to colour in their patterns before moving on to the next activity, but they can always do that at home.

I suggested that they should only use four different colours so they'd have to think carefully about colour combinations, and I think the pieces look better when they is a colour theme.

The 4 year old who created the piece on the left decided to use all of the colours and the crayons and felt tips. Mix of colours and textures? I'm down with that. Her 7 year old brother whose work is on the right announced that he'd be 8 by the time he finished it. 

I was impressed by how many different kinds of patterns the children came up with. I was expecting just a lot of spots and stripes.

This activity kept the children (well, except the 4 year old) quiet for a good 30/45 minutes. Keep that in mind parents/teachers/babysitters!