Kids Art: Simple Greeting Cards

Helping me decorate the stocking fish, while fairly entertaining, did not satisfy Ana's need to express her current creative streak.

So, I suggested that she make some greeting cards to send to grand-aunts/uncles we visited during this trip.

She found herself in quite a bit of inspired mood one morning to churn out color pencil designs on her own. Good old Camlin colour pencils seemed to work really well for Ana. I am saving the Faber-Castell for later.

It took me by surprise how close she got to what she was attempting to portray - especially the peacock and the paisley mango pattern she saw on the pillowcase - the bottom two cards in the collage below. Okay, I admit, I am biased... but, mommies are allowed to gush, right?!



While she was at it, I suggested that she can make her favorite Thumbprint Caterpillar as well. Now, since this involves using various acrylics and poster colors from my mom's stash, I sat nearby to open/close the bottles and make sure there were no accidental spills.

Being the prissy little thing she is, she insisted on having half a mug of water and a towel handy so she can wash out her thumb between colors :)

And, not wanting to waste paints, I had her make a few simultaneously. As I couldn't help myself, I added the "face" for the caterpillars.




And, just for fun, I got her to write I  ♥  U inside the greeting cards, and sign her name. I hope this brings a big smile to the grand-aunts/uncles who will receive it (assuming I manage to post it before I leave).



Now, even though this has been a long veg-out vacation, we did manage to read books, practice writing letters and numbers on and off, and work with some flash cards. It is probably just the natural developmental stage, but, compared to 2 months ago, Ana seems to be able to hold the pen/pencil better and control her hand movement to create the suggested patterns now.

Usually, developmentally, reading comes before writing as far as I have read, but, I didn't want to push one over the other, so I let her guide me based on her interest. Since most of reading/writing is initially pattern-recognition we've been practicing typing on my dad's machine. I open up Notepad™ set the basic Arial font to 48 point or something large and let her type away... usually, she manages to type the following all by herself:
ana
amma
appa
og

in that order, one word per line, making sure ana is the first one always :)

I am sure Ana (and Og in his own way) will have pogo*-withdrawal symptoms when we get back, but, hopefully they'll have enough activities to keep them busy and happy that they'll soon break out of this TV-habit they easily developed here in India :)

*pogo=children's program TV channel