I couldn’t resist sharing my 8 year old son’s homework with you this week. He was asked to research how polar bears kept themselves warm, so he duly looked up the information and wrote the following piece:
So far so good (apart from some slightly dodgy spelling). He then goes on to illustrate his work with a couple of images – first, an annotated drawing:
This is then followed by another drawing showing polar bears literally ‘fighting’ (each other) to keep cool!
Polar Bears Fighting to Keep Cool
Kids are just so literal – I did try to explain to him that the use of the word ‘fighting’ in this context was just a figure of speech, but I think the concept just appealed to him. I managed to keep a straight face when explaining it, but when I showed the drawing to my husband later we both completely cracked up – we should really get him to change it, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
On another level, I was quite impressed with his first drawing of a polar bear, which he did by copying a photograph. It just goes to show the benefits of drawing from observation. The polar bears fighting drawing isn’t nearly so skillful, but of course that was drawn from his imagination!
Have your kids produced any visual howlers in their artwork? I have decided I’m going to ‘collect’ some of them on a Pinterest board, so if you’re on Pinterest and have any you would like to contribute – just use the hastag ‘AK-Howlers’ and I shall add them.