Pintando

Since we missed Monday, Lindsey and I went to Mensajeros for a couple of hours on Friday. We finally found some art supplies in ACLAS, so I brought crayons and paper to see what would happen if we tried a calm activity at the table. SUCCESS! Teresa continues to amaze me. She knew immediately what to do, and got right to scribbling all over her paper. I started drawing simple shapes, and she quickly robbed me of my paper to color them in! She was very selective with colors, and seemed to understand patterns. We switched back and forth between coloring and tracing shapes, and then I thought I'd test her a bit more. I started to trace around my hand and she was fascinated! She showed me that she wanted me to trace her hand, and then tried to trace around mine as well. I drew in fingernails, and she made some scribbles in the appropriate places on her own drawing. I made a dot-to-dot tracing of her name and started to show her how to trace the letters in, hoping she'd catch on and try it. She started to, then gave me a mischievous grin and started scribbling all over them. I have a feeling she was holding back, and that if I practice with her enough she could learn to do it. So exciting!

Maria didn't like the controlled aspect, but sat there at the table for the whole two hours. We got her to scribble a little bit, but she mostly tossed the crayons around on the table. Eventually we started ripping and scrunching the paper, throwing it in the air, sorting it into piles, passing it from one person to the next. I considered it a huge improvement to be able to sit there for the whole two hours, because her normal attention span is about 10 minutes.

It was a great day! We left feeling encouraged by their excitement, and anxious to try something else.