As parents guided their toddlers to different art stations, I too led my son to something new to do. He chose the stamping station stocked with lots of rubber stamps and many colorful ink pads. After using a few different stamps and a couple different colors, he realized that stamping was more limited than he liked. We moved on. The next station he chose was really quite neat. Large paint brushes were attached to long bamboo sticks creating three very long paintbrushes. A large and long piece of paper was attached to the wall and on the floor were three pie tins full of paint: red, blue, and yellow. At this station three children could paint at a time. My son grasped the long bamboo extended paint brush, gingerly dipped it into the red paint, and applied it to a small section of the much larger canvas. He paused for a moment to watch the other two children paint, and then he began painting with more confidence. It seemed that this particular station was growing in popularity as other children waited in line. So we moved on to yet another station. This next station was equipped with pieces of black cardstock and fluorescent tempera paint in pink, green, and yellow. Sponges were provided to apply the paint to the card stock. My son did two fluorescent on black paintings and was ready to do something else. There was another station that had glue, scissors, and lots of different scraps for making collages. Thinking that my son would enjoy cutting, I coaxed him over, but he had absolutely no interest. He wanted to paint at the easels again. This time he painted solely with the roller (as we went along, I wrote his name on his art pieces, and the art teachers would gather the pieces on and in each child’s portfolio).
(To be continued …)