Painting

I wish I did more art projects with the kids, but the amount of fun the kids have and the time they spend "arting" doesn't usually justify the mess for me.

But today I thought of a solution: Go outside (which is much less obvious when you don't have a yard).

While we waited for the laundry, we went across the street and taped up big sheets of brown paper.

At first Jesh said this was a "rainbow stream", but it became a "colorful building with a silly chimney."

Darcy leaves the interpretation to the viewer.

The kids were getting bored with the paper around the time I needed to move the laundry from the washers to the dryers.

Both kids like to pick up sticks and rocks when we are on walks, and we have a hiding place near our building where they leave the sticks and rocks before we go inside. Jesh calls it his rock collection.

When we came back outside, we grabbed the rocks from the collection to paint.

The rock painting stepped the messy-ness up several levels, but who cares? We're outside!

The kids lined up the rocks to dry in the sun. You can see Sally's little ponytail on her shadow.

After a while the rocks were in the shade of the bushes. I pointed that out to Jesh, and he said, "Who moved our rocks?!?"

I told him how the shadows change as the sun moves. "Do you want to scoot them back into the sun so they dry faster?"

"Nope." he said. "I'll just wait for the sun to go back to where it was."

Then they decorated a "wishing well."

These two women (sorry they're so hard to see) said "Nice painting," as they passed. Jesh looked at me and said, "Mom, those missionaries liked my painting!"