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"    Last year&amp;#039;s winning entry by Dylan Hoffman If my family were a company, I think our mission statement would be: &amp;quot;BE CREATIVE!&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m always looking for ways to encourage my kids use their imaginations \u2014 usually really messy ways that then involve lots of finger paint/playdough/slime cleanup for me, for some reason. Nothing makes me happier than when Harper shows off a drawing she made of her brother and her wearing connected, flying helmets and riding scooters. Or when Alton comes up with a completely wild, leaping dance move like the world has never seen before (which usually involve a descent from a couch or table). Kids have that boundless creative energy, and with any luck their cranky internal editors haven&amp;#039;t yet started telling them &amp;quot;That doesn&amp;#039;t look like a flying hat,&amp;quot; or, &amp;quot;You call that a cool dance move? You didn&amp;#039;t even jump over the dog. Psh.&amp;quot;  So my interest was piqued when I got a press release for Google&amp;#039;s annual &amp;quot;Doodle 4 Google&amp;quot; competition, which invites students to design their own Google Doodle. I suddenly remember how much I&amp;#039;d loved the idea of contests as a kid, and how completely, ecstatically inspired I felt while drawing a silly Easter bunny for my hometown&amp;#039;s coloring competition circa 1985 (and NBD but totally won). My kids are a bit young for this one, but I love the idea that something as mundane as a search engine window can spark creativity. My kids were obsessed with the interactive Little Red Riding Hood Doodle from a while back, and, thanks to their rapt interest, I learned about the Doodle library, where you can see the entire collection of Google Doodles and sometimes learn about how they were made. Harper, who is just starting recognize letters and read a little, was fascinated by the way the Doodles use different shapes to stand in for the letters. So there you go, our accidental screen time was totally educational. If your kids are in the K-12 range, why not encourage them to design a Doodle this year&amp;#039;s Doodle 4 Google contest? The theme is &amp;quot;My Best Day Ever.&amp;quot; I know I&amp;#039;d love to see what that means to my kids. And I&amp;#039;d love for them to look at the Google logo any given day and think, &amp;quot;Yeah, I could do that.&amp;quot; After all, in this family, if you&amp;#039;re not creative, you&amp;#039;re fired. Okay, fine; maybe just demoted.   Amy Shearn is the mother of two small children, and is the proprietress of Household Words, a blog about babies, books, and Brooklyn. She also writes for Oprah.com and MommyPoppins.com. Amy is the author of the novel How Far Is the Ocean From Here (Shaye Areheart/Crown 2008) and a forthcoming novel about, what else, a Brooklyn mother, called The Mermaid of Brooklyn that will be published by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon &amp;amp;amp; Schuster, in 2013. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/news/a14976/google-doodle-kids-drawing-contest/>