Drawings and doodles 

Every child is an artist. The problem is staying an artist when you grow up. {Pablo Picasso}

I’m always amused by the way kids communicate through art and writing. As adults, I think we’re scared to draw pictures because we don’t think we’re skilled enough to do it well or we fear what others will think of our attempts. We claim we’re not “artsy” or “creative” and resort to just doodling here and there. And, writing is scary because we compare ourselves to all the other great writers out there and fear we’ll fall short or not articulate our thoughts well enough to be understood. But, children? For the most part, they don’t have these worries. They draw and color and write with complete abandon, and the results are rarely boring.

Yesterday the girls were out of school for parent-teacher conferences. I didn’t have a good plan for the day, so it didn’t take long for the fussing to begin. The morning started off with them locking themselves in various rooms and passing notes under the door. This is one I found in the floor upstairs when they were fighting over what to play. Apparently one had asked the other, “Can I come in?,” and this was the response:

This note reminds me why I don’t believe in placing a huge emphasis on spelling in elementary school. Would you believe the 3rd Grader who wrote this usually gets good scores on her spelling tests? I promise you on Friday she knew how to spell “maybe” and “write,” but yesterday on a random Wednesday she resorted to basic phonetics. “Maby” spelling doesn’t matter all that much?

Once the fighting escalated, I made everyone sit down and draw/color for awhile. The Kindergartener wanted to draw pictures of Bible stories, and these are a couple of my favorites. The first one is a scene from the Garden of Eden.

This is unedited except for the part where she asked me to write in Adam’s response bubble to Eve. I’m not sure any of us know exactly how their conversation about the apple went down, but this might not be all that far off. If only Adam had acted on that initial hesitation… Even the sun looks disappointed.

Next we have the story of Joseph being thrown into a pit by his brothers.

The striking thing about this one is that Joseph is smiling as if he’s being thrown into a foam pit at the local trampoline park rather than being thrown into a large hole in the ground and left to die. Maybe the artist is foreshadowing the eventual {much happier} outcome of Joseph’s story.

Then we have the 3rd Grader’s drawing of our family:

The bubbles are a little hard to read, but they are indicating what each of our hobbies/interests are with the exception of the Kindergartener and me. Hers says, “I am very crazy,” which is fairly accurate. And mine says, “I like coffie,” which is totally accurate. Apparently I have no other hobbies that come to mind except for that one.

Whatever. At least my eyelashes look a thousand times thicker than they do in real life.

The 5th Grader loves to draw pictures of people dancing or doing gymnastic things, which is generally hard to do. This is her illustration of a figure skater:

If I dared attempt a pose of this sort, I would be in physical therapy for life. But I like how young artists aren’t concerned with matters like flexibility or physics of the human body.

And, one final picture from the Kindergartener:

I appreciate how kids are generally better than adults at expressing their feelings. They just tell it like it is whether that be something along the lines of, “I don’t like that shirt you’re wearing,” or something kinder like, “I like my neighbor.” The Kindergartener is a big fan of the kids on our street and couldn’t wait to deliver this to our 4-year-old neighbor yesterday.

I can’t remember the last time I drew a picture. I sure don’t remember being so proud of one that I wanted to give it to a neighbor or a friend or hang it on the refrigerator. So I guess Picasso was right about artists: the problem isn’t being one, the problem is staying one when you grow up!