And the other day I sat down with A to do draw some pictures.
What I've learned from this is that I shouldn't do collaborative art projects with the child. It's not because doing art isn't a learning experience for him (it is). It's not because he doesn't have fun (he does). It's because A's process-oriented approach to learning, which is appropriate for a two-and-a-half-year-old, is exactly the sort of thing to drive a product-oriented forty-three-year-old person like me stark raving insane.
Using the extruder isn't about mass-producing Play-Dough stars for A. Or even mass-produced leaves, moons, or triangles (and then arranging them onto a tiara). No, for A, it's about mooshing different colored blobs of dough through the extruder and yanking them as they come out of the other end until the dough is a uniform grey. And being unimpressed when I pointed out that at one point the strips of dough coming out looked like the storm systems on Jupiter. And then walking away so that the dough dries out. And then announcing that he's not eating the Play-Dough while crumbs of the stuff are falling away from his mouth.
And using crayons to draw pictures? That's about discovering how many times one can snap a crayon into two pieces, and then slamming the fragments into the table. OK, I did have a little session where we took turns drawing trucks, but then he wanted me to draw the whole thing. While he ate the remaining crayons. And wadded up the paper. While denying it.
In fact, I'm beginning to think that A is developing his own version of The Negative Confession
- Oh M, who comes home from work; I am not eating crayons.
- Oh J, who is an award winning writer; I am not touching the oven.
- Oh M, who drives a big truck; I am not pulling the cat's tail.
- Oh J, who takes me to the library; I am not poopy anymore.
I guess it could have been worse. We could have been playing with the toy that allows one to play phrases from Eine kleine Nachtmusik out of sequence.
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