Today I worked with the children and focused on family...
Each child painted a picture of their family. It was a very interesting observation for me because most of the pictures told me that these kids are being raised by their grandparents or by a single parent.
Jonatan is a young boy who wanted to paint two pictures..so I let him paint two. The first picture was with his whole family and then the second picture was with him and his father only. I know for a fact Jonatan does not have a father in his life..but he wishes he did.
The children were so great to work with..they behaved so well..much better than I did when I was their age. Some kids took the whole 2 hours to do their painting.
You can tell so much by how the children work when they are creating little masterpieces. One of the questions I got asked by these two 8 year old twins as they pointed to their picture was `Is this ugly?´. And I have observed these twins a few times and I noticed they would have finished a great drawing and then they would redraw it over and over again. Perhaps, they are perfectionists? But to ask if it is ugly? I didn´t want to start analyzing but it was apparent to me that they are not told enough how great their work is. So, I looked at their work and said ´Ugly? are you crazy..it´s beautiful´and they would laugh and I could see they felt so good about their work. After that they would simply call me to show their art..and it was my place to tell them that it was great.
It is important to validate a child's hard work with appreciating..even if you think its the ugliest thing you have ever seen...understand that they love it and its about them not you.
Thanks for reading
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