I wrote this in November and forgot about it. I had waited because I didn’t have pictures. Ah, well, just shows you how I need to start thinking in Blog Terms. THAT is going to be scary. Well, here’s the post, just for fun:

How interesting…well, for me anyway…maybe not for you. But today I…well, let me first explain that I teach four and five year olds. So I had created an art project that I thought they might enjoy and never mind exactly what it was.

Okay maybe you need to know. So it was a placemat for the Thanksgiving feast that we are planning. The children had painted brown paper with these wonderful iridescent paints of autumn colors–gold, russet, bronze, red, magenta, orange. Then I took the papers home and cut vertical slits in them. I also cut out strips of paper that they could weave in and out of the slits. The papers I chose were wallpaper samples, wrapping papers, construction paper, tissue paper, and the like.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because of this: I got so HIGH seeing the whole thing come together!!! I LOVED seeing how the kids responded and worked with the materials. The piquante sauce for the whole tasty experience was how the children were excited to make their own pieces and how many of them took ownership of the project. One little guy, Carson, figured a way to fold over a strip that was too long rather than trimming it off (which was my thought). Many of the children chose to weave strips into wonderful combinations that I would never have thought would work.

I remembered, in my reverie, that children work with art materials as if certainty rules the world. They have absolutely no doubts or second thoughts about their choices. All they know is how THEY do it in that particular moment, responding to the exact items in front of them and ignoring everyone else’s interpretations. How satisfying to be able to be oneself, wholly, in the creative moment.