Creativity in Coloring
by Melanie Bettinelli on November 18, 2011
We took a break from alphabet coloring pages. Bella was getting a bit tired of them. I’d noticed that she wasn’t finishing the page each day and then she told me she’d rather not do them anymore. I told her we could have a break and come back to them in a week or two. I don’t want it to turn into something where I stand over her forcing her to finish her coloring. That would be absurd.
At the same time I do want her to persevere. If this plan doesn’t work I’d like to find some way of getting her to focus on the alphabet one letter at a time.
Anyway, today she asked for a school coloring page so we picked back up where we left off with H. I printed a couple of pages—a fancy illuminated H, and a house with a hen. It is fascinating to watch her creative process as she colors. As she colored the house with her colored pencils, she was telling a story about the family who were painting the house two different colors. She talked about them going to the store for cans of paint and how they got a big can of dark blue paint and a small can of pink paint. She talked about how they were going to put up a sign that said “The Most Beautiful House”. She said it was called Morning Glory House and then changed her mind and said it was called Rainbow House .
It reinforces my feeling that for Bella the graphic arts are always at the service of her storytelling. As long as she can spin some kind of yarn, she’ll color or paint for hours. But when it becomes simply a matter of filling in the lines she gets bored.
Comments
We get bored with those too. Mind you, Claire is only 4 so we rarely do tablework, but even when we did (we had a structured couple weeks last year while I was assessing claires skills, and the types of activities that spoke to her early learning style), they got monotonous quickly. Claire adores crafts, especially glueing and cutting. So sometimes I cut out a big letter and give her shapes or scraps of paper and let her glue the letter to a sheet and then decorate it. She also likes to trace, so sometimes I make large dotted line letters in a page and let her trace them. And then Elizabeth Foss has her alphabet path printables that are even another way to go. I’ve also been looking at a book we will use later called “handwriting without tears” (I think), where they use wooden slats and curves to create letters.
We are obviously at a different stage and won’t be doing any formal reading instruction for at least 2 years, but these are tools I’ve got in the back of my head and that we use when Claire asks to do tablework. One of her favorite things is also to trace big letters with her finger on book titles when we read, so that’s a more casual letter recognition thing she does for herself.
I love hearing what you guys are doing, because I feel like its probably similar to the general path we are in the super early stages of. Rock on teacher-mama! (I think that’s redundant.
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Posted by betsy on 11/19/11 at 01:53 AM
Betsy, some great ideas. I love the glue scraps into a big letter idea. Maybe even painting a big letter would work too. I’ve done the tracing thing for her before but it’s another thing she got bored with. (I can tell that this is very likely the pattern her schooling is going to take. To me it seems like a basic personality trait more than a stage: Bella will probably always be looking for something newer and shinier. I’m still pondering how that will shape our educational journey if it is true.)
I’d looked at Elizabeth Foss’ alphabet path stuff and decided that trying it would make me feel I’d committed to something I’d feel obligated to finish and that it wasn’t where I was this fall. But we might look at it again.
I’ll admit I turned to the coloring pages idea because I was feeling kinda dry on the creative mama teacher front. These days I’m feeling stretched pretty thin. Good thing I’ve always thought of “kindergarten” as a chance to explore some of my ideas about teaching in a hands-on way rather than as a curriculum we need to get through. I kind of wish I’d been more like you and started doing things last year. But oh yeah last year was a bit crazy with growing a new Anthony and all. See, I’m trying hard not to compare but rather to be inspired by what other people are doing when it seems like it might work for us. Like you, I love to look at friends who have kids a year or two ahead of Bella to get glimpses of where we might think about heading.
Posted by Melanie Bettinelli on 11/19/11 at 09:48 AM