Finger Paint Progress

When I made the move from teaching upper primary to early childhood, I was amazed at how much my students learned, changed and developed in twelve short months.  When I made the move from working with five year olds (who suddenly seemed very grown up) to having my own kids, I was blown away at the rapid pace of learning.

Just this week I watched my daughter finger painting.  It was only four months ago that I blogged about ten tips for fingerpainting, and posted this pic of her artwork.

Finger Painting - May

At this stage she loved feeling the paint in her hands, sloshing it around, swirling the colours and making hand prints.  I made sure she had a very large piece of paper to paint on, and a larger drop sheet underneath!  There wasn’t a whole lot of method to the madness, and that was just fine with her.  It was all about the experience.  Her focus was on the process, not the end product.

Only a few short months later things have changed quite a lot.  Suddenly she’s painting pictures!  It’s fascinating to watch this change take place.  There is still a lot of madness on the page, but now with much more method to it.

Finger Painting - September

“What are you thinking about while you’re painting today?”  I asked.  (A much better question in my opinion than “What is it?”)  She was very sure of her answer.  She knew exactly what she was painting.  “It’s a sunny garden Mummy.  It has one sun, two blue birds and three red bees.  Oh, and a penguin,” she added!  Of course.  (The photo above is a work-in-progress: only the grass, sun and bees had been painted at this stage…)

The teacher in me can’t help but notice interesting things like the fact that she is starting to use “true-to-life” colours for some objects (like green for grass), yet at the same time her mind has no trouble with bees being red.  I love that she knows you might find birds and insects in a sunny garden, but doesn’t have any qualms about a penguin being there too.  And I am always intrigued by the way children paint the sun.  It doesn’t really have a shape or colour that is easily represented, but children so often insist on including the sun in their art.

Of course it’s about at this stage that the mother in me tells the teacher in me to stop analyisng my child’s art and just enjoy it for what it is!  A little masterpiece.  Can’t wait to see what her paintings will look like in a few months time.  It’s beautiful to see the world through the eyes of a child.