Full home education was not for us
During the pandemic, I sure tried, but often with a lot of frustration and now knowing how to proceed. My "Pequena Chica Bonita" is a little stubborn child as well as one that needs to hear things she doesn't like 500x before changing. Although she's had a brain scan a few years ago as I really had no idea how to approach her many times, and nothing weird turned up at the time, we still both often say she has autistic characteristics. There's just no other way to describe certain issues we face with her. BUT the good thing about this is that she's SO creative and she just thrives when she can create something, may it be a drawing or craft, or in this case painting.
She adores my creations and I adore hers
I'm very proud of the way she can think of something and suddenly come to me "look, I just created this" from something totally unrelated, and the uses her glue/pencils/paper whatever is needed to make it look as she envisioned. So many cool creations were done by her and she keeps surprising me every time. Usually, she just starts trying something herself, and either comes to me with the end result or I only help her when I see her struggling as she can't think of a good way that something will stay intact. I ask her what she wants to create and then explain to her how I would do it and try to help her with it if needed, but usually, she's all ready to pick it up and do it herself anyway after I explained how. Honestly, these moments are gold, as I see her light up completely when she realizes that it wasn't as difficult as she envisioned and now she learned something new.
Drawings and paintings
Although lately, she has created some surprisingly fun new drawings and paintings, quite often she eventually turns back to the same sceneries in her artworks. I know that when I sit down and draw or paint with her, she will get inspired by what I do, the thing is that I currently have so much up my sleeve that I can't find the zen moments where I let my creativity flow. Meaning, that I can't really do that as it will be an epic fail anyway. Therefore I decided to propose some things to draw or paint every day. Like in this case, I told her why don't you try to paint her doll, put her in the chair and then start painting and see if you like the result. When I proposed that, she was immediately satisfied and went to work. :)
Ok, this one looks a bit evil but I think she still did well! As I can see she just tried to paint the eyelashes :) the other doll doesn't have these so that painting has nice round eyes.
I tried teaching her to work with layers
As you've probably noticed, the first doll painting had a white face and she tried creating the face by painting a brown line as well as giving her brown arms and legs. I explained to her that she can work in layers and first create a background, let it dry, and then start adding the doll in layers. She had zero interest in first adding a background and then waiting for it to be dry, BUT at least I could convince her to paint the doll's head and wait a bit until adding the hair and eyes:
I think she picked that up quite well. I know she is impatient if she has something that she set her mind to, she doesn't want to wait for hours, so instead I will now try to think ahead for her and paint some paper with a background color in the evenings so that she can just add her painting on top of that without waiting for it to dry. We still have SO much paper and other wooden things to paint before we leave. I rather let her have several painting moments a day than throw it out. I see how much she enjoys it. And it makes me happy seeing her like that.
What's not to love about this cute face <3
In case you're wondering: yes, that chair is taped together haha. We got that one for free when we didn't have a car yet and Ikea was a not so pleasant trip from our home. The thing is the chair missed some screws and thankfully Ikea was going to send them by post. The thing is, they never arrived. :( so this was the temporary solution, guess what, it never collapsed. Long live duct tape! Looks horrible, but it's working!
Painting vibes
Since she started painting this day, she has not stopped and I can tell you that there is one painting that we created together and I'm so proud of her that I will mint it in NFT Showroom in the next few days. Of course, that artwork will get a separate post as I want her to read this back when she's older and have the NFT minted for her as well. I'm so proud of her and I have to admit that I absolutely adore this phase where she's at home more often until we leave for Spain as it means we get to get creative a lot instead of spending time in traffic!
Thank you for reading and see you next time!