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Sunday, June 14, 2009

Family Art Time

Mo Willems talked about it on NPR. Amanda Soule wrote about it in The Creative Family and her blog. I firmly believe children need to be actively creative.

Now, there is a groundbreaking statement, right? Who knew!

But before you scream something about poo and Sherlock Holmes at me, let’s really think about it: it seems like the last thing our society wants to risk is a child with time on his or her hands. Sure, you don’t want your kids utterly bored all day and night. Activities are great! We have our out of the house routines every weekday. In a couple of years, once we have fully emerged from the ‘baby jail’ stage, where we must return to home base frequently to recharge, and when every human in the house understands and willingly uses toilets, we’ll do much more than we do now, I am sure.

But we’ll also take time to just ‘be’. Everyone needs time to simply create-- in many different ways--together. It grounds us. It bonds us. We encourage each other, and help one other.

I can’t say we’re able to sync up to do Family Art Time even weekly during the school year. Generally it’s a good after breakfast on the weekend activity, but life moves fast and sometimes it simply doesn’t happen. However, now we’re into summer vacation, and, when we’re home, I’m going to try to make it a morning ritual at least a few times a week.

This morning was our second ‘go’ of it for the summer (2 out of 3 days is not bad!). Even Cole got to take part, and it can be hairy at times when he decides to ‘embellish’ Bunny’s masterpiece, but he’ll learn to keep his scribbles to himself.

It’s not about the end product, but letting one’s mind ‘air out’ a bit, I think. You can’t color outside the lines if you never take out the crayons.

2 comments:

Elle said...

I really like your tomato painting. :)

Kristianna said...

Oh, ha, thanks! Yeah, it's on Bun's wall, b/c she likes it too. :) It's a masterpiece, you know -- took me like 5 mins at *least* and that includes the time spent going out to pick a leaf.

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