Sometimes, the simplest activities are the best, aren't they? That was certainly the case with our day 39 activity- just painting. Nothing fancy, just bog standard painting.We first tried painting with Isabelle in the summer by simply putting some paint splodges onto paper and letting her loose. That was the first time I began to understand that her uncertainty of textures was a big thing as really didn't want to touch the paint. Due to that, I haven't tried painting again, but after buying a whole load of new paint brushes for her recently, I decided it was time we tried again.
I'm so glad I did as using the paintbrushes to paint was right up her street, and she really loved this! I taped some paper onto the tuff spot and put 5 colours of paint into our paint pots. She didn't need any further instruction and jumped straight in. She really loved making marks on the paper, along with dipping the paint brushes, and regularly changed color - with orange and green being her favorite.
After she had painted on one side of the paper I invited her over to the other side, and she came and sat down next to me. What happened next surprised me no end....Isabelle painted her hand! She used one of the paintbrushes to dab paint on to
her hand and wasn't in any way worried about having it there. This is something that would usually really upset her, so I was so proud of her for being able to take that step forward in her own time. In fact, I then asked her if she would like me to paint her whole hand, which she allowed me to do, and I even got her to make a hand print on the page! I was genuinely amazed by how happy she was to do this, and it has opened up a whole word of possibilities to us now in the run up to Christmas.
After maybe 20 minutes she had had enough and we read some stories, then I took the paper away, but left the paint out. Later, she came back to the paint and sat on the tuff spot painting straight on to it. As the tuff spot is black the paint was a little difficult to see, but she happily smeared paint across it for another 15 minutes. It was so easy to clean as well - it hosed off easily.
I was so pleased with how well Isabelle took to her painting, and how far she has come with her uncertainty of unusual textures. Lots of painting will be in our future, I think!
