tux paint, kalidoscopes, and mazes, oh my!

I have mentioned before our love of the free, open source drawing program for kids, Tux Paint. Lately, Paul and Sophie invented a new game to play using Tux Paint: Supermaze!

But first, to give the non-initiated a quick tour of Tux Paint, here are some pictures, made by Luc, who is not yet three years old. He ADORES Tux Paint and plays it almost every day. I’m putting these here, not as, “Oh look at my amazing kid’s drawings” but rather, “Look at this amazing program that makes it so easy for little kids to express themselves by creating pictures that they really love.”

From his sea creature period:

From his barnyard series:

You can see that there is this awesome ‘stamp’ feature where you can select something from, I don’t know, maybe hundreds?, of images and click, click, click them anywhere you want, in any size, and then draw on the images, etc. Very cool.

Here are two picutres that Sophie, four and a half, has done.

First, another sea creature picture—she made this one for Luc when he was into sea life (it all started with a show on whales that we caught on the National Geographic channel that knocked all our socks off.)

And for something completely different:

Of course, you can just draw on the program, too. Here is a family portrait, by Sophie, of us all at the beach.

Okay. We’re getting to the mazes. But first I have to tell you about the kaleidoscope trick that Tux Paint can do, by taking a line and quadrupling it, in a kind of Turkish Rug pattern. Here are some of Sophie’s recent kaleidoscopes.

It’s computer art on acid!

Here’s one Paul did (yes, the grown ups play Tux Paint, too!):

And here is one I did:

It’s surprisingly satisfying! Like doodling.  On steroids.

Then, at some point, someone here had the idea that these fancy kaleidoscopes could easily become mazes, and poof, a new family pastime was born.

Supermaze!

Here’s one Paul made for Sophie to solve:

She starts at the little dot and finds her way to the heart. Here is her on the way to solving the maze:

I don’t know if you can see it, but the ‘solving’ line is actually made up of running squirrels! When the curser changes direction, the squirrels change direction, too! Tux Paint is the bomb.

Here’s one Sophie made for Paul.

This one was solved by running white kittens!

A couple more:

And that’s Supermaze! Hours can pass, drawing, taking turns making mazes and solving them, making funny pictures….

I swear, it’s just about impossible not to have fun with this program. If only all software was this easy.