Kids Colouring Competitions - a round-up

It must be that time of year - lousy weather, half-term, bugs and chickenpox - but there seems to be a plethora of Kid's colouring competitions at the moment!  I thought I'd show you one we've just entered and give you details of a few others happening right now.

I appreciate that not everyone agrees with entering their kids into competitions, and to be honest that's something I pondered over before taking the plunge.  I am a competition addict so I'm a bit wary of inflicting this on my daughter.  However, drawing a picture is a perfectly harmless activity and one that she thoroughly enjoys, so I thought why not!

There are two other great competitions going on at the moment, but sadly Ruby is too young for these, but if you have slightly older kids them these are well worth a look.

The lovely Maggy over at Red Ted Art has a great competition on at the moment in conjunction with Chatterpants children's clothing.  If your child is aged 4-10 years old, then they can submit a drawing which may end up being featured on their new range of clothing - how cool is that?!! In addition, the winner from each category will receive £50 credit to spend with them.  Head over to the blog now for all the information.

Next up is Galt Toys, who have been running a colouring competition for St David's Day.  It's open until 6th March and you can download a cute dragon from their Activity Zone to colour in and upload.  This one is for 5-10 year olds, and the winner gets a fantastic art jar full of goodies.  Keep an eye on their site for more crafty tips and competitions. 

Now, I was so disappointed we couldn't join in with these, but thrilled to hear of this competition being run by Fly Thomas Cook, and hosted by Artful Adventures.  A lovely 'paint by numbers' type competition open to children aged 2-6.  When I heard that we were being encouraged to get creative and use whatever medium we fancied, I jumped at the chance - Ruby is the queen of gluing and sticking!

We downloaded and printed off the aeroplane picture, then raided the craft cupboard to see what we could use.  Clearly, at not-quite-3 years old, I needed to read out the colours for the corresponding numbers, but she had a great time rummaging and found some yellow pipe cleaners (these would make the sunbeams) and some blue and white feathers (inspired choice for the clouds!)

The rest would have to be good old felt tip pens.

Resisting the urge to 'help' too much, I cut and shaped the various bits to size and pointed out the numbers and appropriate colours.  She glued them in place and scribbled the rest with felt pens.  Not too much going over the lines, I was actually pretty impressed!  We don't tend to do too much 'colouring in', most of her artwork is free-style on a blank piece of paper, but I think she really enjoyed trying to control the pens.

Here is the finished result - shame you can't see the true lovely fluffiness in the photo!

Competition entry by Ruby (aged 3 next week!)

So now we'll be uploading this to the competition site and checking out some of the other free downloadable games on the Fly Thomas Cook site.

Hopefully this may have inspired you to do some colouring with your kids, if you know of any other current colouring competitions, please do pop a link in the comments box. x