Literary and Artistic Pursuits

If I'm being honest, I have to admit that our kids spend spend their fair share of time in front of a screen. And a lot of that is educational these days. But we try to be intentional about doing other things, especially on a rainy weekend like this one was. In the video you can see a sleepy Jacob "reading" his book. All of the animals say "baa" right now :-) He still loves to go through his books and will sit for 20-30 minutes going through a stack of books. My favorite moment is when I ask Micah to "read" to Jacob and I watch him make up stories surrounding the pictures in the book. Next year I bet Micah will be able to read some basics to him because they are doing so much with the Pre-K kids at school. Micah really enjoys painting. This creation above is a family portrait, according to him. Jacob helped with the green part in the corner (before he stuffed the paint-filled brush in his mouth! Thank you, Crayola, for non-toxic finger paints!) He has the "blue blankey of inspiration" stuffed into the waist of his pants, as you can see in the first photo:-) He explained to me that if you put some paint on the paper and then blow at it, you can get a feathering effect. He loves to do this with crayons too, which can be partly blended if you color with two crayons and then wet the paper and rub the colored area. It's fun to watch him take an interest in these activities. On Saturday he spent his rest time (formerly known as nap time) working on a special project for Daddy who was coming home that night from a conference. After rest time was over, he went back into him room by himself for another 20 minutes or so, putting the finishing touches on this project, which included a paper bag puppet, several squares and strips of colored paper cut with edging scissors, lots of stickers, coloring, envelopes and other things. It was quite the masterpiece! Although he can be a wild and wooly kid, Micah can concentrate like few people I know when he is working on a project.