Earlier this week, my daughter-in-law looked at her youngest in the back seat car seat and was astonished to see that he had somehow unearthed a bright blue marker and had drawn all OVER his face!(He had had so much fun doing it too :)
It reminded me of a lesson I almost learned too late about art supplies: have them in a place that is ALWAYS available to your children! That same daughter-in-law is due to give birth in a few weeks, and she will have 3 boys 4 and under. I always am asked how do you teach many different ages, and one good way is to have appropriate art supplies on hand for them to discover and use.
Because of my teaching background,I somehow imagined that all school supplies needed to be up and out of sight. That is almost backwards to our philosophy now of having exciting educational books and products within easy reach.
Our oldest first asked to read "The Lord of the Rings" because he SAW IT OUT and thought it looked interesting. He also saw my husband and me reading whenever we had a free moment.
In addition, doodling has a place in our homeschool. All of our kiddoes had the option of illustrating whatever "read-aloud" we happened to be involved in at the time. Even though some children are more artistically inclined, all kids can learn to draw. Our 12 year old is right now completing a course where he is drawing the entire world, all the latitudes and longitudes and labeling all continents, countries, and as many capitals and physical features as he can remember--STARTING from a BLANK sheet of paper!!
So, give those kids blank paper--and let them create!
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