Art Lesson, Character Lesson

We headed over to “the big city” on Wednesday in search of some adventure.  We found some paint by numbers at Hobby Lobby, and I thought it would make a good quiet time activity.  It’s always hard to find quiet things for Silje and David to do during Elias and Solveig’s afternoon nap time. 

 I honestly just intended for it to be a simple, fun activity.  Silje has a much better grasp on fine motor skills, so I let her pick out a tough one.  I picked for David a simple dinosaur pack.  As it turns out, I ended up adding way more rules and structure to this free flowing art session that I had originally intended.

 I was just thrilled that David wanted to do it.  His desire to pick up any sort of writing/painting/coloring project is new to the last few months.  At 5 years old, Silje was writing fairly well.  David is just starting to wrap his mind around the concept that there are lines and you should stay in them.  He didn’t do superb in that area, but I didn’t say a word, because he’s still so new at even attempting this that it was good practice.  He got some good improvement on number recognition as well.  Man, I sound like a teacher.

Silje had a paint by number that we’re planning on working on for the summer, not just the day.  Starting with just one color, she was supposed to find all of the 24s.  I told her I wanted her to find every single 24 before she picked the next color.  It took a lot of concentration, which she did great at.  It also took a lot of patience, which she did great at too.  I wasn’t planning on picking a fun thing that required so much sitting and attention to detail. 

The hard part came when she said that she was done with the color.  I told her that when she was all done with the 24s, to let me know and I would set the timer for 3 minutes, and I wanted her to look again for the full 3 minutes.  The first 20 times, she couldn’t even get the full “I think I’m done with 24” out of her mouth before she would find another 24. 

“I think…oh…never mind.”
“I…oh, here’s another.”
“I think for sure…oh…”
“OK, now, I’m…never mind.”

That elevated to actually getting the full thought out, and then finding more 24s within a minute.  At that point, I brought up the character lesson of letting our “yes be yes, and no be no.”  I knew she wasn’t intentionally lying, but I wanted her to work to find the truth.  I told her if she didn’t put the work into looking, she shouldn’t say something unless she has done the work to know if it was true.  We’ve been talking a lot about truth and lies with her.  So far we’ve been working on it from the angle that lying is a sin.  Unintentionally, this activity turned into “work for the truth” part of the lesson that has been ongoing with her.  While she painted we had a good discussion on how important knowing the truth was.  Silje is one of those kids where things often come easy for her, and working hard has to be learned.  We talked about how valuable the truth was, and how it’s often laziness to assume things.  I didn’t mean to turn a perfectly fun childhood activity into this deep lesson, but it just came out.  Once again, I’m the kill joy. 

Well…I guess I didn’t kill all the joy.  She still said it was so much fun and can’t wait to work on it again tomorrow.  I’m waiting for the day when she looks at me and says, “Mom!  Just let me paint!!”  She puts up with so much from me…she’s going to be a pretty tough lady when she grows up.