Will is like any preschooler….he’s developed the dreaded opinions.
At first, I thought that every single opinion was adorable…oh you want to spew your chewed peas down your shirt! What an amazing human you are! You think it’s hilarious to color on Nana’s purse ? It is! You think it’s a good idea to use your brother as a human trampoline even after I said no? He really is quite bouncy!
Now….notsomuch.
But there are some areas that I actually LOVE having his input in….namely his room. I asked him what he thought of it and he was really quite frank about the things he liked and the things he didn’t. He didn’t like certain art…he didn’t like that we took all the toys out (we were told this would help at bedtime…it didn’t)….he didn’t like his bookshelf because it didn’t hold his big books the ‘wight way’ and he wanted his teepee somewhere else. On the other hand, he told me that he likes more color and wants more “superhero monster truck car big boy stuff”. That was a direct quote from the little man himself. Also he wanted more pictures of himself and Weston. It’s funny to me the things he requested because I LOVE them all. like truly love. like it sounds like paradise for my little guy.
After our little conversation I immediately took down all the pictures that he didn’t like. I also asked him if he wanted to make his own pictures…to which he emphatically said yes. SOoooo….this is us…making his own art.
I’ve seen a lot of demonstrations of cotton ball art….this one is basically the same. I just squirted some acrylic craft paint in bowls and diluted it with a little water.
The entire idea revolves around dipping a cotton ball in paint and chunking it at a piece of paper (or canvas or whatever). Eventually, it begins to look like art. And when I say ‘art’, I mean ‘paint splatters on a piece of paper’.
So my method to keep the chaos at bare minimum is this: I taped a piece of poster board to an old piece of insulation board and put the entire thing up on a drop cloth. I also made sure Will was fully dressed like a cow.
Then came the fun part….the throwing part. You remember how I used to label all the photos of him pitching stuff as “throwing stuff picture”….consider this their homecoming parade 🙂
We kinda expected the paint to be ‘weepy’ (making it have drips and splatters)…um no.
Instead…the cotton balls stuck like a . Will thought it was hilarious.
At one point he did some ‘rainbows’ and then we did a little rapid fire throwing. It was really fun overall…but way less messy than I had expected.
That is…until Will decided that the funner game was to take all the cotton balls and squeeze them like ‘wemonade’.
Since I had this round mirror frame that accidentally is now mirror-less….it became the perfect way to show off Will’s handiwork.
Let’s be honest…kid art is always far from perfect but the kid (ok and mom too)…we don’t care. To our eyes it’s the best, most beautiful, most lovely thing ever. It’s something to be proud of. It’s something to share with the world (and the walls). And it’s something that reminds us of…well…our kids. Our children aren’t perfect either (much to contrary belief)…but dang if they aren’t originals…full of color and fun!