Week Five- Activity Two

The second half of this week's class was also a painting activity. It was one of those standard activities everyone does with children but they don't know why. When I was teaching art, I left this project to the classroom teachers and focused on helping children to draw pictures of themselves instead.

The child lays down on a large sheet of paper while an adult traces around their body creating a large shadow shape of the child. The proportions are distorted and there is very little resembling the shape of a head because of the hair. There are many ways to fill in this shape. Our instructor elected to have the children work with tempera paint and markers if desired. She also provided yarn for hair but for children this young it would require much adult intervention to glue down the yarn.

Leah was aware that this shape was her. She chose, however, to ignore the idea of adding eyes and other details. She simply wanted to paint. There were only five colors with a single paint brush in each. Remember that there were four children painting at the same time. Needless to say this was not the best arrangement. The best part of this activity is that every child approached this differently. I was going to include a picture where too much parental intervention had taken place but decided against it . What I want to do is caution you that if you are working with your child remember: "It is okay to ask questions. It is not okay to paint it for them. Little learning takes place when you do all the thinking."