Mom’s Choice Awards is excited to announce another post in our interview series where we chat with the inventors, designers, publishers, and others behind some of our favorite family-friendly products.
Hello, Mom’s Choice readers! Welcome to another interview in our ongoing series. We recently spoke with Rose Wong who is the Production Director of the Mom’s Choice Award-winning product, bekids Coloring! If you’re tired of cleaning up broken crayons and shreds of paper, bekids Coloring could be the change you need. bekids Coloring allows your little artists to get creative, without any of the mess! bekids Coloring comes with simple and easy-to-follow drawing guides to help kids draw pictures they can be proud of. It also helps them develop visual literacy, build confidence in their creativity, and transform them from little scribblers into master creators. For different ages and abilities, bekids Coloring offers a range of ways to create. This product should definitely be at the top of your holiday gift list! Keep reading to find out more about Rose Wong and her award-winning product, bekids Coloring!
MCA: Hi Rose, thank you so much for joining us, and congratulations on your Mom’s Choice Award! I’d like to first start the interview by having you tell us a bit about yourself.
The MCA award-winning app, bekids Coloring!
Rose: My name is Rose Wong. I am a visual artist and an art educator. I am the Production Director of bekids Coloring, a doodling, and coloring app for kids. It is one of the series of apps that bekids created specifically for kids.
MCA: You say bekids Coloring is one of the series of apps that bekids created specifically for kids. Can you tell us more about your company and what it’s all about?
Rose: We are bekids, a team of educators, designers, developers, and artists building educational apps just for kids. We strive to inspire a lifelong love of learning by creating fun and engaging products. bekids apps give curious young learners the best foundation of essential skills for both school and beyond. Each app contains age-appropriate games, stories, and adventures that nurture early-years development in art, reading, math, science, computer skills, language development and social-emotional skills.
MCA: Studies such as one conducted by FIU have found that educational apps can be helpful in supporting early learning in young children. That’s why the apps that bekids offers are so important! Let’s talk more about the MCA award-winning app, bekids Coloring. Can you tell us more about it and why it was created?
Rose: As art educators, we always observed how art could channel children’s emotions, embolden their creativity, and foster individual expression beyond language. One time, I witnessed one of my young students draw a heart shape in a woman’s belly. She then told me that it was her upcoming younger brother. We can see that children have the ability to tell stories through their artwork, in which they not only project but also consolidate their imaginative visions. Their natural tendency and ability to create is almost like magic! We want to strengthen this beautiful magic by making coloring and painting easier, more accessible and more versatile. So, we created bekids Coloring as a portable canvas as well as an infinite coloring book where children could doodle anytime, anywhere and about anything.
MCA: What needs were you trying to fill when you created bekids Coloring?
Rose: We understand that art-making can sometimes be demanding—in terms of the space required or art supplies needed. Kids love to doodle as much as possible but the parents might have headaches about piles of sketched paper, broken crayons, paints and stains. Some parents also expressed that they do not know how to further guide their kids’ artistic expression and interact with their kids since they themselves are not “artists.” We want to ease the parent’s burdens and empower the kids to paint freely.
Therefore, this app consists of two parts. The first is Doodle Pad. Doodle Pad contains a versatile free canvas where kids can color and draw freely with different art tools such as pencils, brushes, paint, and shimmering markers, and a variety of coloring pages sorted by themes such as princesses, pets, mythical creatures, and robots. The second is Animation Creation. This part allows children to learn to draw step by step, and then what they draw will come to life through animation. Parents appreciate how the app provides simple guidance for their kids without over-interrupting their creative flow. And the children are excited to see the dinosaurs they just drew now roaring on the screen!
MCA: You are truly allowing children’s drawings to pop off of the page! What kind of feedback have you received about bekids Coloring?
A preview of the MCA award-winning app, bekids Coloring!
Rose: Our users love the app and most importantly they use it very often. A lot of users find companionship in the app and use it whenever they feel like creating something. We have seen some of our users’ artworks and we are proud of them. Not only did they follow the in-app instructions on how to draw specific objects, but also, and more importantly, they added details, colors and stories on top of the templates. They let their imagination run wild with the guidance and help provided, and created their own masterpieces with the empowering toolkit of bekids Coloring.
MCA: What is next for bekids and bekids Coloring?
Rose: We will upgrade bekids Coloring with more interactive functions, different themes and a larger artistic toolkit. But the bigger mission will be to give more freedom to the children. We are currently building a bigger, longer and more open-ended scene for children to decide what to draw, where to place their characters, as well as what stories to tell. We want the kids to be the director of their own stories and have more autonomy over what they want to create and what they can create. Please stay tuned for our upcoming Christmas edition where we will add a new function “Creative Scenery” to achieve this exciting goal.
As for bekids, currently we have products that cover subject areas such as reading, coloring, coding, fitness, science, and even an app dedicated to puzzles. We’ll continue to expand our library of content within each app and provide kids around the world with better, more creative, and more exciting activities, lessons and content. We will continue to optimize our product, and strive to provide better learning experience that inspire a lifelong love of learning.
MCA: That’s all so exciting, we can’t wait to see what the future holds for bekids, keep on creating!
You can learn more about Rose Wong and her award-winning book, bekids Coloring, by visiting her MCA Shop pages.
