Goblin Art

(Goblin is 22 months)

I've always been into art. My mum has a natural flare for craft ideas and drawing. One of my earliest memories as a child was helping her glue smarties onto a giant picture of the three bears  - the smarties were the buttons on their waist coats. My twin sister is the real artist of the family, but I dabble and I love to encourage the Goblin to do arty things. When he was a couple of weeks old I painted his feet and hands with red paint and made hand prints. The paint stained his finger nails and made him look like he was bleeding. Oh the shame!!


When he turned one I decided he was old enough for his first real painting project. I was wrong. He just tried to eat the paint. 

I have persisted in trying to get him into painting. Mainly because its something I enjoy. But it can be a bit of a hassle. Paint equipment takes a while to set up even if its just the bare minimum - paints, water, wipes, brush, paper, plastic sheet. Goblin usually paints for about two minutes and gets bored. I then have to stop him from touching everything while I clear up. I normally resort to turning him loose in the garden. 

I do sometime get some nice paintings to hang on the wall or send to the grandparents. This was his very first and I was very proud.

For the time being I have found that pens are a more successful art tool. The ink in the Crayola washable felt tips washes off easily and Goblin finds them quite easy to hold and use. 

When we first introduced Goblin to pens he thought they were delicious. We got through quite a few because he would suck them dry. I'm not too bothered, everything goes in Goblin's mouth and so far the only thing that has made him sick was dishwasher rinse agent a couple of months ago at Nanny's house. He took a big swig and then puked up his breakfast.  In our house all the poisonous hazards are in high up, very hard to open, cupboards. 


We bought Goblin an easel when he was 16 months old. I thought it would be easier for him to draw on but the paper was actually to high for him at that age. But he did enjoy climbing through the easel. Our one was from the Early Learning Centre 

Eventually he got the hang of the easel. It has a black board on one side and a white board on  the other. He enjoys playing with chalk on the blackboard. He also uses his chalks on his cubes.

His Poppy made him these amazing blackboard paint covered cubes. He loves scribbling on these. I like writing his name on them which is why in this photo they have lots of Es. I think they will become a great resource when he is learning to read. For now they are a great resource for art. 


Recently though he has been more happy scribbling with pens at his little table. I leave his pens in a pot on the table. I taught him at about 17 months to put the lids back on. At the time I did it as a fine motor skills exercise. He had been getting really good at putting sticks through the holes of a parmesan cheese shaker and I thought getting a pen into the tiny hole in the pen lid was a similar activity. Not only was he able to do it quite fast, but it has really paid off because now when he draws with his pens he will carefully put the lids back on so the pens don't dry out. 


He is really into fire engines at the moment and I found some fire engine printables.

I printed a bunch of them off and put them on his table. He will regularly wander over and colour one in. Well, when I say colour one in I mean scribble over it. But I have noticed recently that if I colour in one wheel really carefully he will try and colour the other wheel carefully. 
His other favourite craft activity at the moment is stickers. We are going through sticker books like you wouldn't believe. Some of the sticker books have a silhouette of the picture and a sticker that correlates. I was really surprised how good he was at recognising the silhouettes that match a sticker. I think that maybe younger children look at outlines of shaped before they look at detail in the middle which would explain why he can do this so well (thats just my theory though). 
When he isn't matching the stickers to the silhouettes he creates sticker art. Here is an example from when he was about 18 months old. I like this one because it looks like he has intentionally created a car crash scene. If you look carefully you can see the ambulance, the crashed car and the wheel going flying.