saturday morning art

I love weekends! I'm a working mama, and during the week there's a lot of missing the kids, wondering how they're doing, and calling them on whatsapp video chat. It's gotten better, but I always used to feel guilty at work being away from the kids, and guilty at home being away from my work. I'm still learning to strike a good balance, but it helps to remember that doing fulfilling work that I enjoy and having my own interests makes me a better mama for my children.

But, back to weekends. Saturday mornings are perfect for art projects and activities because we're not rushing to church like we are on Sundays, and nobody is falling asleep or getting grumpy as kids sometimes do in the afternoons.

This morning, the children were playing with their toys - Bobo, two airplanes from his latest favorite show, Super Wings, and Wawa, her favorite pup from the Paw Patrol - when I suggested we do some art together. They were all for it, but made their intentions clear from the start: Bobo would be drawing Jett and Dizzy from Super Wings, and Wawa, Skye from the Paw Patrol. So we took out our paints, palettes, rollers, and pencil crayons, and got started. 

The children enjoyed using the rollers to create backgrounds for their scenes - Bobo used blue to make a sky for his planes, and Wawa used green to make some grass for Skye to play on. 

Painting the backgrounds

It was an incredibly sunny morning, so it only took a short while for the backgrounds to dry.

Paintings drying in the sun

As they were drying, the children worked on drawing their chosen characters, but this was when things proved a little trickier. In the past I would sometimes do the outline of the characters or animals Bobo wanted in dots so he could connect them, but today I wanted him to try drawing his planes by himself. He struggled initially, and felt discouraged, but when we started seeing the shapes (here's an oval, Bobo! and the eyes are circles, see?) he became more confident because he loves and is an expert at shapes! By this point we had lost Wawa - she had become bored with her Skye picture, and had abandoned it. 

We decided to switch gears. I gave Wawa a page of Peppa Pig stickers (her other special favorite character) and she covered her grass with them, making a 'Peppa Party' scene, which she was very pleased with. 

Wawa's Peppa Party

Bobo finished his two drawings with increasing confidence, was so proud of the final product that he picked out a place of honor for it on our wall, and asked to hang it up immediately.

Isn't it amazing?

This morning's art time taught me a few important lessons:
1) it's healthy for children to face challenges now and again, because overcoming them is a worthwhile and amazing thing, and
2) it's okay to switch the plan sometimes, and allow the babies to just enjoy themselves rather than insisting on sticking with the 'original plan'.

Happy painting! Happy learning and growing!