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Like so many of us all over the world I have found myself thrown into the world of homeschooling, with absolutely no choice on the matter! The kids are probably bored of me trying to teach them things like maths and english and I am desperately searching for new ways to entertain them. They’re suffering from not seeing their friends and family and are desperate for ways to keep in touch. Of course we can do phone calls and video conferences but isn’t it lovely to get a letter or an email, something that can be kept for prosperity? I thought it would be a lovely way for the kids to keep in touch with grandparents, so many of theirs are in all corners of the UK and nowhere near us.
After chatting to Athena and asking her what sort of cards or letters she might want to write she said at school they sometimes make designs up on the computer. Although she loves drawing and colouring sometimes “it makes my hands hurt from holding the colouring pencils so much” which made me laugh. But in my day job I do a fair amount of simple graphic design for ads and social media etc so we turned it into a learning experience for her and made some greetings cards using some fall clipart from Design Bundles, as well as some other collections. One’s we’ve been using include tree clipart and sunflower clipart.
I let Athena pick the images she wanted to use, and layering the individual images meant she could create a gorgeous bright sunflower with a stalk and leaves surrounding it. We added some text in a handwritten font to make it a little more personal. For the next design she wanted some cake and tea cups as she knows her nanna loves tea (and she loves cake!) so we made a ‘tea themed’ card next, still using the hand written font.
They are really nicely illustrated and full of colour, so they can be added to pictures and designs really easily. I think that would also work really well cut out and used to make traditional greetings cards too. Next week we will do an art session which will help Arlo’s fine motor skills by cutting out some of the designs, and then colour in some drawings and add the printed designs onto them – mixed media I think the professionals call it! There is a huge range of different collections and themes available on the Design Bundles website, so if you’re learning about anything specific with your kids now, or when they go back to school it’s definitely worth checking out what’s available to help illustrate projects and reports!
For now though, we’ve taken the easy way of sending them by downloading them to my phone so we can send them via email or whatsapp along with a personal note to each of the people that we’re missing so much right now. We will save them to send as cards too though.
How are you keeping in touch with your loved ones?
These are really lovely, especially at the moment. My mother in law doesn’t have a smart phone so something like this would be perfect to send.