L'artiste

The rainy weather has begun and to ward of insanity, it was necessary to take refuge at Michels - the mega-art supplies store.
Last month, my inner alarm sounded when the thermostat began to quaver against the first breaths of northern chill. Heeding this warning I scoured the local book store, like a panicked squirrel in search of nuts. My search paid dividends, as I found a book within the genre of my serach - "The Essential Rainy Day Book". It was full of arts and craft ideas to occupy bored and restless kids - SOLD.
Today saw the second day of rain, and a blanket of leaves which had fallen over night - this time the cold weather was here to stay, so I dragged out the book and left in sitting precariously on the edge of the table....beckoning the curious to give it a flick through.
Of course Alex wanted to make candy animals...marsipan, horrible stuff. I was able to spark his interest elsewhere and the finger puppets eventually captured his imagination.
So we headed off to Michels for felt and glue. $90 later, we emerged with felt, glue, paint, paint smocks, paint brushes, stickers, coloured paper, tissue paper...and a basket. On the way home, we even stopped in at the fruit and veg shop to collect a box to make a puppet theatre.
Alex hounded me to make a panda finger puppet and Olivia wanted a "purple one", so I set out to make a parrot for her. Unfortunatley they didn't really stick around and help with the finger puppet making - so two was the extent of it...for now anyway.
They were very eager to put on the smocks next, and get into the paints. Alex was interested in colour. He enjoyed experimenting with what different colours were made when mixed - especially the effect white had on a strong colour. Olivia is 2 years old and LOVES painting. She uses the whole page and enjoys the texture of paint and making patterns on the page - swirls, lines, waves, circles and dots. I have watched her paint at playgroup - her actions appear full of purpose adn intent; she enthuses creative energy and appears to salivate in front of a fresh white sheet, relishing the opportunity to transform it, whereas I have nervously considered how I might approach the same situation - fearing the ruining of the perfect canvas with an imperfect representation of the image in my head. I think she may be a budding artist. I really want to encourage that.
The paints were eventually put away, not because they had had enough, but due to the mess - Olivia had paint everywhere. She couldn't help touching it, squelching her fingers through it, smearing it all over the table and covering her hands with it - front and back.
We had fun whiling away the afternoon in a creative flurry of excitement, colour and mess. We still have a puppet theatre to build yet, not to mention the other puppets....oh and masks and beaded jewelery and muffin cooking and....maybe this winter won't be so bad after all.