Artistic Pursuits

I planned a lot of art this year.  My children are always doing something "artsy-fartsy," as my husband says.  They draw and color and paint.  So much of the time I don't place a lot of emphasis.  I am not naturally artistic.  My husband has artistic talent, however, and our children seem to have inherited the ability.

Both girls are officially studying art this year.  Plus, I have left opportunities to be artistic in other subjects with notebooking.  We haven't avoided art, it just wasn't a priority unless scheduled as part of whatever curriculum we were using.

As I was trying to plan this year, I kept watching my daughters naturally drift toward art.  It is common for ten year olds to be creative, but even my seventeen year old was drawing.  I felt, looking back, as if I had shortchanged my children in something they naturally loved for math lessons and sentence diagramming and more reading.

Nothing is wrong with any of those things, but I overlooked the natural creativity inside my daughters.  I didn't nurture it.  

When I open their world to more creativity, more art, they do not disappoint.

Here is some paintings from my ten year old.  She is splatter painting and creating a masterpiece of our dog.  

She is girlie and loves painting hearts and rainbows.

My seventeen year old is playing with shading and shadows.

She draws flowers, like any girl, especially the enchanted one from Beauty and the Beast.

But her favorite is faces.

I love the art my children create.  I take pictures of it all because I know I won't be able to keep it all.  (This is especially true for my ten year old.)

Lesson learned.  Let the children be creative and artistic, even if it takes the place of some "academic" time.