Our resident artist

My child loves art. She loves being messy. She loves to paint and draw.

About a month ago Chad and I invested in a bunch of art supplies and organizational drawers and bins to store it all in. My thought was that if the stuff is in a place she can get to it, she can tap into her creative side anytime she wants.

So the artist has been hard at work for several weeks now. In addition to paint, markers, crayons, colored pencils and paper, we got her some pom-pons of varying sizes, buttons, feathers and googly eyes! She's fascinated with the idea of gluing stuff down and has done some pretty interesting (abstract?) pieces using the buttons and pom-pons!

This afternoon she decided she wanted to paint (watercolors) some animals. She asked for help from me. I asked her what animal she wanted to paint...

L: An elephant.

M: OK, does an elephant have a big body or a little body?

L: big body

M: OK, let's paint a big body... (painting by Mama)

L: elephants are brown (as I'm painting the body blue)

M: They are?

L: Yeah, at the zoo. 'Member? And they eat. And they need to drink water. 'Member?

M: Right. OK, let's paint the head (using brown paint now)...does an elephant have big ears or little ears?

L: big ears

M: OK, let's paint the ears...(more brown) What about an elephant's face? What does it have on it's face?

L: (pointing to her nose and scrunching it up) a nose!

M: a trunk?

L: yeah! a trunk!

M: Can you paint the trunk? (hand over paintbrush)

L: Sure! (paints trunk beside the ear) Where's its other ear?

M: I don't know...where is its other ear? Can you paint it?

L: Sure! (paints ear on side of head) it needs eyes...

M: OK...paint some eyes! (she paints an eye)

L: where's its other eye?

M: I don't know, where is its other eye?

L: (FLIPS PAPER OVER) Here it is! (and paints an eye on the back side of the paper) It's on the other side!

Of course, why didn't I think of that?