How kids are different

We do art at least 5 times a week, though usually it's more often. The kids love it and it develops their fine motor skills, creativity, and confidence. Once they started speaking I started asking them open ended questions about what they had made. Prompts like: "Tell me about your painting." and "What does it look like to you?" Each piece is completely different, even when the kids are given the same materials and instructions. Most of our projects are open ended and I don't tell them what they are making, but before holidays I do have more "instructed" art projects.

This first project was painting that they did in September, so around 23 months old. They picked the color of the paper, chose 5 paint colors, and used small paintbrushes to create whatever they want. When they finished they told me about their paintings.

This is my daughter's painting. She said, "The paint uh pink white bunny cow uh no car." Aren't you glad she cleared that up for you?

This is my son's painting. He said, "Blue paper with eggs green. The dinosaurs in the water. No paint up the top."

Dictation is important to do with children. It teaches that you are listening to them and that you can write words. For an adult this seems obvious, but the connection between spoken word and written word is one that has to be made for young children. Just as reading makes the connection that written word can be spoken the reverse that spoken word can be written is amazing to toddlers especially. It's also fun to have documentation of how their language improves, their vocabulary grows, and their interests change.

Here is a Halloween project we completed earlier this week (the kids are 25 months). I cut out triangles and squares from black paper and gave them orange paper. I told them we were going to make jack-o-lanterns. I did not have an example. They could not see a jack-o-lantern from where they were working, but have seen them around the neighborhood. Once again they have very different takes on this project.

This is my daughter's jack-o-lantern. She was very precise about where to place each piece.

This is my son's jack-o-lantern. He was also very precise. He described the 3 eyes and the 2 noses (the second nose is the triangle in the top right corner) as well as the mouth.

My daughter's looks like someone told her exactly what to do and where to place each piece. My son's is more unique. Both are equally wonderful. If you have ever walked into a preschool you are likely to see either a class full of artwork that looks perfect (teacher done) or a class full of unique (child done) art. Developmentally it's better if the child does art the way they want it to look, unique AND perfect.

Another project we did this week was to make skeletons. Once again I told them we were going to make skeletons and gave them the black paper, glue, and Q-tips. I did not tell them where to place them. I did curl one Q-tip for each child and they both decided to make it the head. There was no example and they could not see an example of a skeleton while working on it.

This is my son's skeleton. Just a bit symmetrical - he gets that from his father. :)

This is my daughter's skeleton (glue is still wet). She told me it's made from a head and many hair bones. Unique and I love it. Though I do realize we need to read more about skeletons and bones since she clearly missed part of the concept. I don't need much encouragement to bring in another Science concept.

I hear many times how wonderful it must be to have twins who are so much alike. I'm not sure how to respond to this. My kids are nothing alike - you can even see this in their art. Talk to them or play with them and you will see they have even less in common. I love that I have twins, but I love them as individuals, not as a unit. I love them for their differences and even in the few things they do have in common.