When Addison was sick a little while ago I decided to get out an art book and his crayons that I had bought for him using Great Nanny’s birthday money for Addi so that he had an activity to do that didn’t take too much energy. At first he wasn’t really interested, but slowly his interest became greater and greater.
Addi is now coming into me in the morning before I’ve even got out of the bed, dragging his splash mat, crayons and art book so he can draw.
I’m fairly strict on Addison when using any of his art stuff (crayons, chalk, etc). He always has to use his splash mat and he knows that he has to put the crayons back in their box when he’s done. He’s not to walk around with them. I try to get him to only take one out at a time, which he mostly sticks to. He is actually very well behaved when using them, but I made the rules from the start and he knows and follows them.
Recently Addi entered his first colouring in competition. It was a little bit hard, there wasn’t much chance of him winning a prize because it was based on an age group ranging from 1 to 5 year olds in Addi’s category. Very hard for a 1 year old to compete with a 5 year old!! It was an Easter competition so I thought it would a fun Easter activity regardless. It took a couple of weeks to get Addi to colour the majority of the picture. But I was very impressed at the colour he got on the page and how good it looked. He even manged to stick mostly to the inside of the image. He is a winner in my eyes, that’s for sure!!!
I’ve noticed some changes in how Addi draws and colours as time goes on. At first I could only get Addi to draw one line or one dot on a page before he would change to a new blank page. Now he uses much larger actions and puts a lot more colour on the page. He is also starting to use different motions and drew his first circles today (5th April). He is slowly learning his colours but for some reason loves to use the white crayon despite not being able to see it working on the white paper!! It is really interesting to see him develop his drawing skills, I think he is doing wonderfully for his age.
Here are a couple of his most recent drawings including one of my favourites.
