Educating Risa

Daegan has been on an arts and crafts kick over the past several weeks, though admittedly it is waning as the weather warms and the creepy crawlies in the garden beckon. A few weeks ago he created this dinosaur picture completely on his own—my only involvement was him coming to me with the finished product and saying “Mom, can you take a picture of this?”

The background is an ordinary 8.5 x 11 sheet of blue construction paper. The dinosaur is made of a paper plate cut into segments (round middle of the plate for the body, separate tail, neck / head, and leg pieces), and then painted, and an eye later added. The clouds and tree were cut from construction paper, with the tree trunk coloured in with crayon (we were out of brown paper). All the pieces were then arranged and glued down in place.

I could tell Daegan was quite proud of this work, as he signed the back—something he rarely does:

I love the confidence he has with arts and crafts materials, and I am very pleased that I have not passed along my “art anxiety” to him. (Just as many people had horrid experiences with math in school, and as adults suffer from “math anxiety”, I had horrid experiences with art in school, and hence “art anxiety.”)

I think this one is going up on the wall of his room.