Doodling to Learn

Keeping a six year old interested as you read resources, regardless of how short, can sometimes be a challenge. I have never wanted learning to be a burden, but hope for it to be a passion. We have gotten many doodle and coloring books in the past, but as she advances in school, I wanted Audrey to be able to access something more interactive than a simple coloring page.

So what's my method? I encourage multimedia learning! Those of you following this blog have probably already noticed this to an extent, but in the case of doodles and coloring, I tend to follow the method of oral reading and translating it into artwork. I do encourage independent reading, but as we go through our history and cultural lessons, I look up doodles that we can incorporate into our lessons.

An example of this process came well in line with my latest book from Blogging with Books. Doodletopia Cartoons, by Christopher Hart, came in on Friday while I was out and about, and I was itching to try it out on Audrey. I had already played around with some doodles of my own (see below), and while I expected it to possibly be a bit advanced for Audrey, I thought I would see if and how it fit into our lessons.

We incorporated the book into the story of Hannah and a discussion about emotion. We talked about and drew what we believed Hannah felt at the different points of the story. My daughter really got into it and the pre-drawn head allowed for us to focus on specific drawing skills while also discovering emotion and character.

This turned out to be an ideal book to share with the whole family. There are quite a few things for the advanced artist and lots of room for personal creativity. Without the line-by-line steps, I worried about Audrey finding it too difficult, but as I looked more into the book, I discovered a surprisingly wide range of difficulties. For the more advanced artist, you can do your own detailed cartoons from scratch with hints and prompts. For the more artistically challenged or or young children, there are simple projects such as drawing and discovering facial expression or more abstract designs.

I would recommend this books to just about anyone. It is surprisingly large at 160 pages with buildings, animals, boys, girls, predrawn prompts and pages for creating your own drawings. The benefits of doodling are well-documented and increasingly popular as a general topic, but I can see this particular book as a great outlet for special needs children, developing artists, the artistic adult or just someone wishing to investigate doodling's beneficial properties. Doodletopia would be a great book to take on family trips or to discover together on winter days.

See below for pictures of our experience with this book and links, and also check out my Facebook page for more articles on the benefits of doodling!

For more information on the psychological benefits of doodling click here.

For more information about this book, click here.

For more information about the author, click here.

Purchase on Amazon here

Disclosure: I recieved this book from Blogging for Blooks in return for writing a review. This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a percentage of each sale when you make a purchase using these links or that I received this product in return for the ; however, I fully support and recommend each of these products. You can view my full disclosure policy here.