Doing crafts with kids is one of the best things a parent can do. Crafting builds motor skills, confidence and hopefully creativity, depending on whether kids are asked to come up with their own ideas (always the best) or not. Beyond crafting is the idea of helping kids (and maybe yourself as well?) gain drawing and painting skills, certainly highly recommended if your child loves to draw and/or obviously has some talent whether full blown or a bit obscurred. One can craft for years and never learn how to draw, as the two are really quite separate.
My ten year old son has started taking drawing and painting lessons from a beloved teacher who moved back to our town, and she is doing a number of exercises with him before they start to paint. One such important idea is that of light and shadow, which allows one to draw things with dimension, and when it comes to painting to paint a picture that is illuminated from a certain direction.
Of course the distinction between the light and dark here is overly emphasized, and I believe he is now supposed to go over this with water to make a progression of shading, but it is a great start, and he is thirsty for more, the best news of all.
As parents we may not always be able to teach our children everything, but if you are in tune with what your child is learning you can certainly help drive home concepts in your day to day activities. This morning as I was looking out the window I noticed some strong shadows on the mountain range, which I just had to point out to my son, and to explain to him that those shadows were actually cast by clouds! For the next few weeks I'm hoping to find other examples of light and shadow to share with him, and our world be just that much more interesting!
