Stuck at home? Needing to keep the kids busy somehow and desperately trying to figure out how that can involve you less while also being somehow good for them?

We’ve got you covered! Between the avalanche of new drawing tutorials we’ve been releasing and the imagination-igniting drawing-starters we’ve linked below, your kids will be inspired and motivated to create new drawings and stories. From their imaginations!

Videos are about 30 minutes long and full of fun, zany commentary to keep kids interested. I mean, which one of us doesn’t want 30 minutes of breathing space these days? (And don’t forget to subscribe to see new videos which are being released several times a week!)

This week we’ve got a fun “How to Draw Easter Eggs” tutorial for kids, complete with “Story Starters,” our innovative partial-drawings where kids can use their newly acquired skills to fill in the-rest-of-the-story. (Some kids just need a little help getting started, amirite?)

Click the links here or at the bottom of this post to download your Easter Story Starters.

These tutorials are perfect quarantine kid activities, homeschool art classes, and any-morning focused fun. Some recent favorites include How to Draw Baby Yoda and How to Draw Sharks.

There are also pre-curated playlists. Start one of those and when interest is peaked in one video, there’s a companion video that’s an easy next step!

Links to Starters!

Here are our free Easter “Story Starters” for your kids’ imagination to go wild. Download four pages of “egg-cellent” starters and let your creativity out for some fresh air!

So it’s been a little quiet around here lately. But only because things have been incredibly LOUD in our world in some really neat ways.

You may already know that we live and work outside of Beirut, Lebanon with abused, abandoned, and neglected children, many of them refugees from the region’s many conflicts. Well early this year, a group from the United States expressed a desire to partner with us and another organization in Lebanon to create a brand new school just for our kids.

Since that time, we’ve been crafting a school intended just for them. Most of them have never been to school. All of them have experienced trauma; all of them live separated from their families (if they have families at all). So our school aims to meet their biggest developmental and emotional needs first, in the context of academics and relevant vocational skills. It’s the first school of its kind that we know of, and it has been a monster of a roller coaster. It has taken every drop of energy we’ve had for months and months and months.

But now we’re eight weeks in to this boisterous adventure, and we’re seeing amazing things happen. The kids feel safe and know they’re cared for. They’re so hungry to learn and are growing as people so, so much.

Then a mere five weeks into the new school, one of the grant organizations (who reports to the UN) had their representatives come and privately interview each of our students. We felt certain there would be a lot of “constructive feedback” from our kids, but with tears in their eyes, the interviewers said that every last kid said they love school and feel safe and respected.

Now that things are finding their rhythm, we’re hoping to get back to the imagination and fun we used to share more often.

Most of all, THANK YOU for being a part of the Serious Creatures family. You are a huge part of our work here in Lebanon and your participation in our online shenanigans keeps us smiling. We can’t thank you enough!

After two years of love poured into this project, we’re excited to be launching Serious Starters on Kickstarter!

We plan to have lots of giveaways and other shenanigans this month (more shenanigans = more fun, right?), so join the fun on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter!

It isn’t everyday that your life changes, but for us, Saturday is one of those of days. In two days we board a plane for Beirut (Lebanon) to work with a home for abused and abandoned children called Home of Hope.

Home of Hope accepts kids from all backgrounds and provides basic needs like food and shelter. But, as the majority of kids are ineligible for government services like schools and medical care, they also aim to provide education, medical care, legal help, and counseling.

Some of the kids are Palestinian or Syrian refugees, others are Lebanese-born. They arrive in the home because they have been picked up off the street or have been taken from a very abusive situation (think beatings that leave scars on young faces or parents selling their children for their organs and you’re on the right track). Their stories are myriad and all very sad.

But we’re so excited to serve in this new capacity. One of the reasons we started Serious Creatures was so that we could have a flexible life that would allow for doing more good with the numbered days we’ve been given. And in a few days, that hope becomes a reality! Thank you so much for helping make it all a reality by being a part of what we do here at Serious Creatures!

(And if we happen to grow a bit quieter over the next few weeks, you’ll know why. Ditto for if you begin seeing photos of airplanes and foreign shenanigans.)

Want to hear more? Here’s a post with a bit more of our story, and here’s an article about Syrian refugees that has a bit in it about the Home we’ll be working with.

We’ll also be sharing bits and pieces over time elsewhere on the web like my personal Instagram account and Amber’s blog and Instagram account. Should you find us there, don’t forget to say hello!

See you soon from the other side!