Drawing Reviews

Here's a fun lacing project with a great payoff--brightly colored felt hand puppets. Winner of the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio's Gold Seal Award, this kit helps children develop better hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity. It also provides nice opportunities for artistic expression and creative play. The kit comes with six 9-inch precut felt shapes, lacing yarn, and six large plastic needles, each ball-tipped for safety. Once children finish lacing, they can use felt remnants (also included) to add faces, clothes, and other decorations to their puppets. They can also use whatever decorating supplies you might have on hand, such as glitter, sequins, pasta pieces, beads, or extra yarn. This is a great project for individuals or groups. You'll need your own white craft glue. And if you're planning a puppet show with the finished products, be sure to allow several hours for the glue to dry. --Joan DeClaire

This cartridge, designed to be used with the Pixter system, features four activities. In "Animal Puzzler," pictures of animals are scrambled and reassembled. "Animal Mix-Up" allows the user to mix heads and bodies of animals to create plenty of silly hybrids. "Animal Racers" features a track for racing various animals against each other. And yet another activity lets players place different animals in a range of settings, much like rubber stamps. --John Moe

Selecting the drawing, choosing colors, and staying within the outlines makes coloring fun. But when you get to add your own drawings to a scene of Barbie life, the fun really begins. The Barbie Rolling Art Desk provides a Barbie-pink, plastic backboard (just under 10 by 12 inches) with spaces to hold the pencil, eight markers, and eight crayons ready for the artist. A fifty foot roll of Barbie-focused coloring scenes awaits the artist's hand. When (if ever) the artist feels sufficiently knowledgeable on the subject of Barbie, the desk stands ready to hold a different 10.25-inch-wide coloring roll. --Ava Natov