Characteristics quirky coloring fun

Occasionally when you suggest that your child spend some time coloring or drawing, you will hear this response: "Yeah, but I don't know what to draw" or "I don't feel like coloring anything."

Try this activity then, which we call "Characteristics." It is one of our absolute, all-time favorite kids games and it's fun, do-able, and creative.

1. Have your child choose a "thing" to draw. This could be anything that captures your child's interest: a princess, a pirate, a monster or Mommy. A supermarket or a superhero, a garden or a gargoyle. Really, anything! For example, let's say your kid wants to draw "a funny monster."
2. You and your kid(s) take turns thinking up characteristics of the "thing." Write down each. Here are some characteristics we came up with for a "funny monster":

Long pointy hair

Big pointy things coming out of his toes—the same as a T. Rex

Ears that stick out

Curly curvy horns on his head

Once you've made a list of 10 characteristics or so, go back through and read each one out loud. Have your child draw each characteristic you read until the "thing" takes shape.

We play this almost every day in our house and find it to be an enormous crowd pleaser. It gets the kids' brains thinking and their fingers conjuring up art. And there's an added benefit: you can show off around the preschool by having your kid explain to other parents the meaning of the word "characteristic."