The Sign of a True Artist?

When music class ended we found something else to do on Tuesday morning: art class!

The class is open to two and three year olds, and our wonderful teacher, Ms. Carol, knows just what to do with these little ones; we're never in one place for too long.

Class begins with "circle time". We sing a few songs before listening to a short lesson on the daily topic. So far we've covered birds, butterflies, wild flowers, and spiders.

Once we learn about our subject, its natural habitat and the like, we're on to the art! We've assembled a bird's nest and fashioned a bird, painted a butterfly, planted a flower in a hand-painted pot, and strung up our own spider web.

I have to admit, it's tempting to help Calvin with these projects. They're meant to be just beyond his abilities, (I use the scissors, for example) but he holds the paint brush, chooses the colors, and applies paint where he will.

His artistic ability really showed itself during the spider web project. We were meant to make an orb web, symmetrical and roundish. The matrix was laid out for us, we were meant to apply a long string to it. (This is what one student created, with the help of her mom.)

Calvin wanted nothing to do with it.

As I applied dots of glue as a guide for placement, he wadded up the long string and mashed it all onto the paper at once. (This is Cal's.)

Ms. Carol was by our side, on cue. "Good work, Calvin! That's beautiful!"

I think her encouragement was just as beneficial for me as it was for Calvin. As someone who values playing by the rules, I would have preferred a symmetrical orb that more closely resembled the teacher's example. But Calvin's is beautiful, and I love that the spider web we took home represents my little boy's desire, intuition ... artistic eye, even.

I fulfilled my role and applied the glue, ensuring that Calvin's brilliance was captured just as the artist intended.