Tux Paint!
Tux Paint is my favorite free educational software application for kids. It’s not going to teach your kids science (like the astronomy software I reviewed), but rather it provides a blank canvas with some pretty amazing tools they can use to express their own creativity.
Planets and their cores, by Nico, age 7
In addition to all of the obvious things you’d expect from a painting program (lines, shapes, fills, text, etc.), Tux Paint comes with a library of “stamps”, which are images that kids can place in the drawing and manipulate by changing the size, orientation, and often the color. The stamps don’t take over the job of drawing, though, if you use your imagination to fit them into your drawing, as with the flame and lightning stamps in this picture of a volcano:
Volcano, by Nico, age 7
And, for added entertainment, many of the stamp have sound effects that play when when you place the stamp in your drawing. I’ll admit that my kids got a lot of laughs out of the picture of a toilet, which flushes every time you place it in your drawing.
African savanna, by Léo, age 5
The other effects are even more fun, such as tools to color fields of grass, or grow flowers, or construct brick walls. The kids also love the tools to create strange distortions such as ripple effects or turning the colors to their negatives. I have to admit, I had so much fun playing with this program with them, that I used it myself when illustrating a post about weird dreams:
Dream house balcony, by Mommy, age 37 (Léo helped)
The user interface is so simple and intuitive that the kids had no difficulty figuring out on their own exactly what they could do. The one-click undo/redo buttons are especially appreciated — no more tears over making a mistake that ruins the drawing!
Plus, it’s eco-friendly: When I look at the size of their “saved drawings” folder, I hate to imagine how many trees would have been killed if they’d done them all on paper…
This is not a paid advertisement, by the way — just a recommendation from a satisfied customer. And the best part is that you can download it absolutely free! (For Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and more.)
teacherninja Said,
June 25, 2009 @ 10:37 am
I concur! My 6yr old has loved it since she was 3. It’s fun and amazing what she can do with it.
Beta Said,
June 26, 2009 @ 6:06 am
Thanks for that! My five year old will love this software — he, too, would go through a ream of paper at one sitting if I would let him. I’m also looking forward to getting Celestia for him. That will make his day!
Ticktock Said,
June 28, 2009 @ 8:59 pm
How did you get the program to work with a picture? I can’t figure that out. Perhaps that’s a feature that only works with Mac?
chanson Said,
June 28, 2009 @ 9:23 pm
Ticktock — It’s not exactly a built-in feature, even on the Mac. What I did was to just find the folder where TuxPaint was storing the images. It stores them in .png format in the current user’s application data. So I just converted my photo to png format and put it in that folder, and I was able to access it.
DSimon Said,
July 2, 2009 @ 11:37 am
I’ve installed TuxPaint on the computers at a school where I volunteer, and it’s really excellent stuff! I especially appreciate its fullscreen mode, which prevents young children who are unfamiliar with computers from accidentally changing focus and confusing themselves.