Got kids? Here's an art activity they'll love (and so will you).

My family, friends and social media connections are all talking about the challenges of working from home while trying to homeschool, looking for ideas on how to keep kids busy and learning during this weird time in the world.

Although I'm not a parent, I wanted to share a simple activity that I used in a series of creativity workshops with foster kids at the Lydia Home, a last resort group home for kids with severe trauma who have been rejected from family placements (one 10-year-old in my workshop had been with 30 families before landing there).

This is the first activity I did with the group, who wanted nothing to do with me when the workshop started, but quickly got down to business for a productive hour of art-making and laughter, thanks to the structure and easy-to-follow instructions.

If you have kids between 5 and 13 years old at home, and access to computer paper and basic writing instruments, thought you might benefit from this, too.

The Four Hands Drawing Exercise (should take roughly 60 minutes):

• Get 4 sheets of 8.5"x11" computer paper per kid, and pencils, pens, crayons or markers. 
• Give each kid one sheet of computer paper and ask them to choose something to draw with.
• Ask them to place the hand that they do not write with flat on the paper, directly in the center.
• Then, ask them to slowly trace the outline of their hand (helps to make it a competition for who can most accurately trace it).
• Next, ask them to add their fingernails to the tracing. Then, have them look at their hands to see what other details are there. Add lines on the fingers for knuckles and joints. What bones or scars or other details are there? Add those too.
• Pass out another sheet of paper. Now, ask them to draw their hand without lifting the marker off the paper. How can you capture the same details from the first drawing, but this time using just one long continuous line? (It helps to give a demonstration.)
• Pass out the third sheet of paper. This time, ask them to hold their "model hand" in the air, and try to draw it without looking at the paper. This is very challenging, and the drawings will look loopy, wild and funny - that's the point!
• Now pass out the fourth paper. Ask them to think about what makes them unique or special, and think about what "spirit animal" represents them but don't say it out loud to the group. Then, have them draw their spirit animal's hand (er, paw) on the paper, giving as much detail as possible. Have them share their drawing to see if the group can guess what the animal is.
• Once all four drawings are made, ask them to go back to them one by one and spend time adding backgrounds, more details, shadows, etc. Or give them some free space to draw without constraints.

(Please let me know if you found this helpful, I have a whole cache of these exercises to share and can't use them with The Lydia Home due to the Shelter In Place guidelines in Chicago at the moment.)