Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Easter Doodle Pad Giveaway

Enter to WIN these 3 SQUIGGLE Activity Pads for Easter! All you have to do is LIKE us and SHARE this post with your friends to be entered in a random drawing. We'll pick one winner on Monday, March 25, 2013. We will only mail to a valid US address.

Our Themed squiggle pads are ideal for kids who have an interest in animals, sports, fashion, vehicles and more. These pads promote learning and encourage research. They are our # 1 goodie-bag item. Choose from 6 titles that range from ages 5 and up.

Our SPIN and SEEK hidden-object games are a must have for any road trip. Spin the wheel then find the 3 objects hidden within thousands of squiggly lines. Play with a friend to see who can find the obects first. Look for additional titles coming soon. Ages 4 and up. 

Happy Easter!

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

The Daily SQUIGGLE

Start Your Day Being Creative!

If you're looking for away to start your morning and get your creative juices flowing, check out the Daily SQUIGGLE! Every morning we post a new squiggly line and ask our fans what they see in the squiggle. Fans post their comments and get other fans to like their suggestion. The fan with the most LIKES gets to see their suggestion come to life because we draw it up!

Soon, we're going to start allowing fans to not only comment, but upload their own doodle creation with their smartphone. It is proven that doodling is a great way to increase concentration and improve your memory. I would suggest that you get a pencil and paper in your kids hand today. Check out the article below.


A Sketchy Brain Booster: Doodling

Good news, doodlers: What your colleagues consider a distracting, time-wasting habit may actually give you a leg up on them by helping you pay attention.

Asked to remember names they’d heard on a recording, people who doodled while listening had better recall than those who didn’t. This suggests that a slightly distracting secondary task may actually improve concentration during the performance of dull tasks that would otherwise cause a mind to wander.

"People may doodle as a strategy to help themselves concentrate," said study co-author Jackie Andrade, a University of Plymouth psychologist. "We might not be aware that we’re doing it, but it could be a trick that people develop because it helps them from wandering off into a daydream."

Andrade’s findings, published Thursday in Applied Cognitive Psychology, are an interesting wrinkle on cognitive load theory: The mind has a limited amount of attention to give and, once occupied, stops processing other stimuli.

Cognitive load is exploited by magicians, whose verbal and physical flourishes distract from sleight-of-hand. It also explains why driving while talking on a hands-free headset is no safer than driving while holding a phone. And it could be the reason why doodling is so much better than daydreaming.

"It takes a large cognitive load to daydream. That has a big impact on the task you’re meant to be doing," said Andrade. "Doodling takes only a small cognitive load, but it’s just enough to keep your mental resources focused on the main task."

Andrade’s team asked 40 people to listen to a recording containing the names of people and places. Afterwards the people wrote down the names they could remember.

While listening, half of the test subjects were also required to shade in shapes on a piece of paper. Afterwards, they remembered one-third more names than test subjects who didn’t doodle while listening.

"The exciting thing is that people actually got better while doing two things at once," said Andrade. "Doodling is not as bad a thing as we might think."

Citation: "What does doodling do?" By Jackie Andrade. Applied Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 3, Feb. 26, 2009.