Togetherness

Today I sat with my two, half-grown, children in the sunny dining room. And we painted, we cut, and we sang “The Devil Went Down To Georgia”. Together.

I have done art and craft projects every chance I can get with my children ever since they were toddlers. Once we made an absolutely immense cut out of a T-Rex head (the thing was 6 feet across) and the kids cut out and taped in the teeth. Then the three of us hung in over my bed as a present for my husband to admire when he got home from a business trip. I helped my kids make underwater murals to paste up on the living room wall and ran across the concrete backyard patio with paint on their feet as a father’s day present to memorialize their cute little footprints forever.

Those days were different. The kids were young, the messes were larger, the attention span shorter, and the post-event mommy cleanup longer. But the common thread is togetherness. The three of us, together. Enjoying each other and having fun. It doesn’t matter what we create or how anyone does their art. What matters is that we are together and happy.

So today was paint, lots of it in bright cheery colors that got everywhere except on our guinea pig, who watched all the activity happily from her cage. From their earliest days, I have told my children that good art is messy – there is no other kind. And this is a mantra they embrace fully. So we had bits of egg crate clippings and dobs of tempera of all colors everywhere in a 20 foot radius by the time we were done.

But the final product is not just a tray of pretty spring flowers. To me it is a product of together. And that is the most precious gift my kids could ever give me.

I recently included this post in a Round Up (see below) so you can click through and read a host of other great homeschooling art moments and perspectives…
Note: the Round Up link goes live Friday, May 5