One of my favorite things to sit back and watch, recently, is the way Rebecca approaches drawing. I am certainly not claiming she’s any kind of artistic prodigy. But from a developmental standpoint, she is showing a lot more detail and precision. When she first got the hang of crayons and markers, of course, it was your typical scribbled mass. Finger paints, in particular, always ended up a big brown-ish blob.
Then she started to move from scribbling back and forth to a more circular motion. Round and round and round she went. She loved making circles.
Now, though, I’ve noticed that she has been drawing more small, separate shapes. Even with finger paints, it’s a dab here, a dab there, a line here, an arc there. A strategically placed handprint.
She’s also started actually telling me what it is she’s drawing. Sometimes, I think she makes a mark and then decides it looks like an oval or the number 7 or something. But the other day, out at lunch, I saw her draw something intentionally for the first time.
She had made a small, loopy shape that started to look like a face. M picked up another crayon and made two marks for eyes. Rebecca, then, made a round mark on either side of the circle for ears, and scribbled at the top for hair. Narrating her intent as she was doing it.
I love watching this shift as it’s happening. And, if I can be so bold as to make a prediction, I wonder if she is going to really gravitate towards learning to write when she starts school in September. Being a Montessori program, of course, she’s free to choose her activities as she likes. And I’m sure she’ll like the drawing and painting things. But even now, she will sometimes tell me that she’s drawing letters and numbers, so I wonder if she’s going to seize the opportunity to figure out the real deal. Time will tell…
Those are gorgeous photos. You are a far more adventurous mother than me, as you can see by my recent craft post listed below. Still, of all the crafts out there, drawing and painting are at the top…even for someone like me!
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Luke seems to use his little drawing board to calm down (v. type A child). The first time I saw the result I was shocked. He had furiously drawn over every inch of the board…You could have titled it : “An angry child I”
I love the pictures of her hands in the finger paint
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Ah, Liz. This is such a sweet post. I can just picture her happily painting away.
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Great great post, Liz. We’ve started writing down the kids narratives as they draw/paint. They come up with crazy fantastical stories or stories identical to the book we just read. But I love having the stories. Even in my handwriting, it’s their voices.
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What fun! I hope you’re saving all those brilliant masterpieces
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Awesome pics, it must be so cool to watch her transition as her Mother.
Someone told me you should write down your childrens’ narratives and tape it to the back of the art piece. How cool will it be to show R&D their artwork and stories when they are older!
I can totally relate. I’ve been surprised to see how Emilia’s drawings have been improving, and then yesterday I picked her up at the gym and she handed me a piece of paper and said, “Look mommy. It’s a picture of me.” And low and behold, it was not just scribbles. It was not just semi-improved coloring-in of one princess or another. It was a picture of a little girl: head, body, skirt, arms, legs, hair, and even a sun in the background. She pointed to the hair and said, “I couldn’t draw curly hair, so I just did short hair” (purple short hair, that is). Her first truly discernible portrait!
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