My #PILOTMUM Portraits

I happened to stumble across a fab competition over on Mummy's Little Monkey yesterday, I liked it because it was one that the kids could get involved in.

The My #PILOTMUM competition involves a simple task, my children needed to draw a picture of me using whatever materials they liked, well was always going to be interesting.

Mine opted to draw me using colouring pencils.

First up is Gracie (5) picture. Apparently I look a bit like an old granny with purple hair and for some reason my head is an awful lot bigger than my body?

Stuck On You Review and Giveaway

With Summer making an appearance in recent weeks, now is the time to get prepared for the warmer weather and Stuck On You want to help.

Originally started in 1995 as a cool kids label company, Stuck On You have added many more personalised products to their range including lunchboxes, ideal for transporting those picnics, summer pyjamas for the muggy night times, puzzles to play with in the garden and beach towels, perfect for whether you are at home or abroad.

I was kindly allowed to choose a couple of items from their range to review. After much delibiration, I decided upon the budding artist kit and the personalised short sleeve pyjamas.

Considering my items came all the way from Australia, I was extremely impressed with the short 5 days waiting for the delivery to arrive and the girls and I couldn't have been happier with what we received.

Make-A-Wish Kids Drawing Competition

London Designer Outlet are celebrating the launch of their play park in a big way.  They have teamed up with top charity, Make-A-Wish foundation UK and they are on the look out for talented little artists to send them drawings of their dream play park.

London Designer Outlet will be donating £1 per entry received to Male-A-Wish so not only will you have a chance of winning a fantastic prize, you will also be helping to raise money for a fantastic cause.

Little Miss Hug Review

We are huge fans of the Mr Men and Little Miss books by Roger Hargreaves in this house, I think I was more excited than the kids when I got the chance to review Mr Men The Christmas Tree last year. So you can imagine what I was like when I got a surprise book in the post….. Little Miss Hug.

Can you believe that this is the 35th Little Miss book in the collection and I think it has become one of my favourites because I do love a good cuddle. With her cheeky smile and pretty pink bow in her hair, she is an instantly loveable character.

Getting Artistic In The Garden

You may have noticed that we had some lovely sunny weather last weekend and or course you have to make the most of the sunshine, even if it is just sitting in your own back garden.

We recently took a trip over to Canterbury and whilst in our local Tiger Store, we purchased a box of 15 large chalks for a tiny £2.

Our garden isn't very big but we thought these would be perfect for the girls to start getting artistic in the garden.

The box contained 5 different colours :

red, blue, yellow, green and white.

There was three of each colour so plenty there for the girls to share.



It was nice to have an activity that the girls could all do regardless of their age and it of course meant that I could sit back and soak up the sun rays whilst watching them, bonus!!!

The Girls Bring Spring to Life

One of my favourite linkys is Draw With Me over on This Mummy Loves. I love it because it is something that my girls can get involved with. The idea is that each month a new theme is set and your child has to draw something that relates to that theme. This month the theme is Spring, very appropriate.

Both Elise and Gracie decided to join in.

Elise (8) drew something which she titled Spring Song, the focus was on all the newly sprung flowers, she even included the orange one which is currently growing in our garden.

My Geometric Universe App Review

I previously reviewed a set of apps from the lovely people at Chocolapps. Recently they very kindly allowed me to review one of their newest apps, 'My Geometric Universe'. This app allows your child to draw many different shapes in both 2D and 3D.

The concept is really good. The app allows your child to use different tools to draw including pencil, ruler, compass and set square. This gets them used to what they will have to do at school if they aren't using these already.

The app itself is again available in 11 different languages : English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish and Russian.

Overall there are 6 2D shapes to create and more than 30 3D shapes to create. With each shape that you successfully draw more objects are unlocked and once fully complete, there are 3 different universes to place these objects in, The Kid's Room, Ancient Egypt and The Middle Ages.

As well as drawing shapes, there is also the opportunity to cut them out and and watch the 3D shapes being created. You can see in the above picture that one of the objects that my daughter unlocked was a doll and you are free to place this object wherever you want in the scene above. All you need to do is press your finger on the picture of the doll and move her around.

As I said the concept is great. Your kids get to learn about shapes, when you click the question mark on the side it tells you a little bit about the shape, for example for the square above it tells you that it has four equal sides.

The instructions to draw the shapes are very clear and easy to follow however actually drawing the shapes proved a little tricky sometimes. When 'drawing' the line, it sometimes took a few attempts for it to actually draw the full line. The other difficulty came when trying to turn the tools around to draw the lines that were going up the page, my daughter and I were both trying but on many occasions the set square for example didn't respond to being twisted around.

Overall I would recommend looking at the app from Chocolapps. Although not quite as simple as it could be, it definitely teaches the kids alot, you just need a bit of patience with it at times.

xxxx

Disclaimer : I was sent a code to download the app however all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Draw With Me - Toys

Last month I joined in with the lovely Draw With Me linky when the theme was Halloween. The idea behind the linky is very simple, your child has to draw a picture using the theme that has been set and if your lucky when the linky closes your child might get picked to win a lovely prize.

This month This Mummy Loves and her lovely daughter Maisie have picked the theme of toys and the prize that could be won is a Gruffalo paint and play set and lets be honest, who doesn't love the Gruffalo!!

My eldest daughter Elise was keen to join in again this month, here is her entry :

Elise said that she has drawn this picture as a toy menu poster, showing you which toys would be good to buy, especially to join in with th "Toy Party".

xxxx

Draw With Me - Halloween

For those of you that don't know, the lovely Sonia over at This Mummy Loves has been running a monthly linky called Draw With Me.

Each month Sonia and her daughter Maisie set a theme and your child has to draw a picture based on this theme. As an added incentive, at the end of the month a random winner is chosen to receive a fab 'creative' prize.

My girls are all little artists and love any excuse to draw some pictures. This months theme is very fitting, Halloween. My three eldest girls all wanted to join in so I am posting a picture for each of them.

FIrst up we have my 7 year old Elise's entry,

She has described this picture as a Halloween fashion show

Next we have mmy 5 year old Freya's entry

This is one scary vampire ready for a fight

Lastly we have my 3 year Gracie's entry,

She said she was drawing flying witches, Elise did help her draw a witches hat on one of them.

The girls have had so much fun coming up with different ideas, we had to narrow it down to these three, when infact they had drawn quite a few each. Can't wait to see next months theme!!

xxxx

Little Artists

Elise, Freya and Gracie are all very creative and one of the things they love doing is drawing pictures, the other day they were each creating images about films, it was nice seeing the different ways they interpreted that theme :

First up we have Elise's (7) picture,

She didn't pick out a specific movie, instead she focused on what where and how we watch these films.

Next up is Freya's (5) picture,

She chose to draw Ariel from her favourite film, The Little Mermaid.

And lastly we have Gracie's (3) picture,

She decided to make up her own movie called "Where's my mum?"

It is lovely to see how their imaginations work and how different each of their drawing styles are. Do your children like creating pictures, what are their favourite things to draw??

xxxx