Isabelle's choice

Today Isabelle suggested I blog about her art (and that I take pictures of our current display).

I like to display my children's art in our dining area. Most of this is done at Playcentre - it gets rotated around after about 8 weeks. The stuff I like the best gets saved in their art files. Other stuff gets donated, used as wrapping paper, or (ahem!) "recycled". For obvious reasons, I try and do the rotation when the children are not inside, or are in bed...

Like many things about parenting, I find my children's art fascinating, an insight into what and how they are thinking and a fine record of their development. I find other children's art...well, less interesting! However, even other children's art is more interesting once you have armed yourself with some information about children's creativity and its development, children's schema and the development of early literacy. Yay for Playcentre training!

Items of note on the walls would be as follows. In the top left photo (well, based on past experience I should say the photo that is currently top left - they seem to move around once posted...), my favourite pieces are the ones at the top. Isabelle's (on the left) is a study of her layering schema (a secondary schema she has developed over the past few months). She has layered colours one upon the other. Aidan's (on the right) is more of a cacophony of exploration of colour and movement, which probably took quite a period of concentrated effort given his age.

On the next photo, there's two more colour cacophonies which I really like from Aidan, created one week apart in July. They contrast beautifully with his piece at the top (sadly undated) of three distinct colours. Rounding out his efforts are three studies which are yellow-dominant. Yellow seems to be his favourite colour. There's a collage of Isabelle's in that photo - an interest she developed over the winter months. The hand collage was a gift to Isabelle on her birthday from a Playcentre friend.

Finally, in the photo where Aidan is reflected in the mirror (:-) ) there is a lovely early literacy "I" painted on Isabelle's two colour exploration. The green and blue piece directly under is titled "Bang! bang!", which is what Aidan said as he brought the brush to his canvas forcefully, reflecting his dominant trajectory schema.