Tux Paint

Story to share - my kids are well into her their teens now, but my youngest, in particular, loved Tux Paint, and used it long before she could read, she'd just click away.

One day, she's playing in Tux Paint, and a print out of her image falls from the sky. We had a desk with shelving. Two shelves above the monitor was our printer. She'd clicked on the print button, without knowing what it would do, or for that matter, even knowing what a printer was or that we had one.

She was SO excited, "look, look, what I was drawing came out on paper from the ceiling"

Not sure if it’s relevant to anyone else, but my kids love this software and have been using it for years

I set up my kid, I think she was 3 or so, she started out with stamps of butterflies and the like. After awhile she looked at her hand, then mouse, then me, stared at me and said "ouch". I got a "travel" mouse that was half size or so, perfect for her hand and she loved using tux paint.

Don't forget to setup sound, preferably in stereo.

She used the hell out of it for years. One time on a call she was fascinated by fish. I printed out one of her drawings remotely while we were on the phone and she loved it.

I use this with my daughter who is 4.5 and she loves it!

Not that I have to tell this crowd. Tuxpaint is free, get it from tuxpaint.org, do not buy it, do not download it as part of a "desktop". I was talking to the author, apparently it's sadly often used to trick people into buying or downloading malware.

This and GCompris are worth a look for any parent!