Sunday, November 2, 2008

Review on Magic Paintbox



Print screen of Magic Paintbox



For children aged 2 and above (2+)




As seen from above, this allows children to choose between squiggling on a blank page or to follow a story line to squiggle something to help the characters in the story. Children will be thrilled by the effects provided for.



1) Draw a picture- Children can choose between different drawing materials.
The list of drawing materials includes, crayon, color pencils, spray cans*, paint brushes, stickers*, pattern paint brushes*, rollers*, animation* , symmetrical crayons, symmetrical color pencils and symmetrical spray cans.



-Spray cans*
-Stickers:


-Pattern paint brushes*
-Rollers*
-Animations*
-Symmetrical crayons*






2) Choose a story: Draw something to help the character (number of stories: 5)







Example: Help Katy the caterpillar use magic spray paint to decorate Katy’s wing to turn her into a butterfly.





After coloring, it changes into a butterfly on the ‘done’ click.


When children have completed, they can keep their pictures too! This online activity is child-friendly and allows teachers to print out children’s work.


Our Review:


With the child-friendly page, children can navigate the page themselves. This activity is age-appropriate for preschoolers as it offer picture menus, meaningful icons, and proper instructional support that is simple and includes auditory instructuibns

This online activity is colorful, animated, have sound effects, and are quick to respond which is what preschoolers prefer. It also allows children to use another media to express their creativity and emphasizes exploration, imagination and problem solving. Furthermore, when children do the picture story version, they are learning language and also, their drawing become more meaningful as well. Behind each story, there will also be a level of listening skills acquired as they need to follow the instructions. As the activity is very interactive with the audio input, it offers children a way of experiencing creative play using unusual art techniques.

At the end of the drawing session, children would click the done button and watch Squiglet tell them what he thinks of their masterpiece! As Squiglet comments positively, it boost children’s self-confident and assure them that their work is nicely done.

Teachers can choose to print out their artwork as well. When done as a class, your classroom can be filled into a ‘mini gallery’. Allowing the children to have a sense of identity and teaching them to appericate not only their own artwork but also others




So we say: