Dino art and fossils

Today, we made some dino art, which was guided, yet flexible. My son has tended to shy away from completely open-ended projects and so, I try to get him interested by giving him a starting point. This time, I drew an outline of a T-Rex and wrote T-REX on the paper. RJ recognized all the letters (even the X, which he sometimes mistakes for K) and painted his T-Rex. What I found most exciting was that he really engaged in the activity, starting with painting the dinosaur's bones, then adding "skin" and an eye. I have observed that he tended to shy away from creating things. He has typically wanted an adult to draw something for him. I found this frustrating, because I have always focused on the process, rather than the product, and continually encouraged his creative work. However, his cognition has always been ahead of his motor development, so it's possible that he was frustrated by his inability to create the images that he wanted to. It appears that for him, having the realistic outline today was enough to get him engaged in the activity without sacrificing the open ended creation too much. He even painted a second dinosaur (brachiosaurus), without an outline and I was impressed that it actually resembled brachiosaurus with its long neck. Perhaps, his fine motor development has allowed him the control to feel like he's making what he wants to, which made the process more enjoyable for him.

We also talked about fossils today as we used the dinosaurs to make prints in clay. RJ loved this activity and when we were done with the self-hardening stone clay, he asked to bring out his play-doh to continue. Tomorrow, his fossils will be hardened and on Thursday, when his co-op buddies come over, we will excavate them from the sandbox with paintbrushes like paleontologists.