You might remember that I posted about a month ago about Dot Paintings, where I tried to introduce dot painting using sticks to JJ (then 3 years and 3 months old), with mixed success. Well, true to my promise, I brought out the sticks a week or so later…
This time I collected a variety of sticks from our backyard. I purposely chose thick and thin ones, straight ones and bumpy ones.
I laid out the paints, sticks and paper beforehand, so they were ready for JJ to discover when she wandered out to the backyard.
She was instantly intrigued…
I sat down next to her, and we painted together. I drew some hearts, and some dotty circles. JJ drew some dots too, and she tried to draw some lines, but she clearly was getting frustrated. There wasn’t enough paint on the end of the stick for her to draw a continuous line. She kept having to redip her stick into the paint.
And then she asked if I could get out some paint brushes for her. She said, in her explaining voice “Mummy, you like to paint with sticks. I like to paint with brushes. That’s ok, we can all paint with different things.”
It’s exactly the sort of thing that I say to her as we go about our day. She even said it in my tone…. It’s quite disconcerting having your own argument style used against you!
So, of course, I got out some paint brushes. After all, I want to encourage creativity, not stifle it. She evidently had an idea of how she wanted to paint.
And after only one or two swirls on the paper, do you know what she did next? She started to paint on the sticks themselves.
So I donated the sticks I’d been painting with to her cause, and sat back and watched my little toddler create in her own way. After all, both painting with sticks and painting on sticks are good practice for her fine motor and pre-writing skills. And more importantly, both are a chance to feed her creativity.
As this was a process oriented art session, the end product wasn’t that important. But here’s what it looked like anyway.
Once the painted sticks were dry, we stuck them in our flower bed, adding a bit of colour to our garden. They make me smile every time I water the flowers. 🙂
xx Danya