A Splash of Paint

Like all children, mine love to do art projects. Most of the time they are quite happy with pulling out paper, crayons, scissors, tape, and glue to put something together of their own design. But they do especially enjoy painting. Eris and Hollis each picked out three colors of paint for Meriel for Christmas, and Meriel has been asking to use them. There is always something else that needs to be done for an afternoon activity - cleaning various part of the house, working in the yard, folding the towering mountain of laundry, starting to put up Christmas decorations, practicing Thai. Usually the kids participate for a few minutes and then I let them go off to play. It's so easy to let the fun parts of "school" such as science experiments and art projects fall by the wayside.

The other day, I encouraged the children to finish up their school work before lunch so we could do a couple of activities after. They enthusiastically compiled. Meriel even complained less than usual about reading. The first goal I had was to clean the second room upstairs. Since we moved in, it has been used as a "suitcase" room. I was so busy cleaning the whole house with the help of four children while my husband was in the States, that I just dumped everything of ours that didn't have a place to go in that room. My parents were coming, so we cleaned up the larger guest room, but we didn't have an immediate need for the smaller one. Since that time, we've never actually had a specific reason to use that room, and it has remained a dusty clutter. I told the girls that if it was straightened up, they could use it as a place to play by alone. If Eris wanted to read without being bothered by sisters or brother, or if Hollis wanted to build something with block without Simeon knocking it down. The girls were excited by this possibility, and we successfully turned the room into a usable space.

The second activity was a painting time. I am not an artist so I don't really teach art to the kids. Eris does appreciate more formal art activities, but the others just want to play. Simeon used a paint brush in water to splash around on his high chair tray. The others enjoyed the bright acrylic paints in red, blue, green, silver, purple, and yellow. I smiled as I watched them and wondered, "Why don't I do this more often?" Of course the answer came when everyone had finished their delightful paintings. Philip surveyed the table cluttered with pallets, brushes, paints, papers, rinsing cups, etc and said, "I'm glad that's not my job." It did take awhile to clean up, and the plastic table cover will remain flecked with paint, but the kids enjoyed it so much, I really should do it more often.

Later, I was looking at the table full of drying paintings and was struck by the difference in the three girls' paintings. Eris really can make recognizable objects. I could tell that Meriel had something specific in mind as she painted, but it was often hard to tell exactly what. Hollis splashed and smeared colors to cover every centimeter of the paper. How fun to see the different stages of development portrayed visually!