Painting Bees- Process over Product

Last week my oldest son told his babysitter that he could tell she worked really hard on her painting of a flower, but it was missing something. He thought it needed a bee! I asked him later that night if he would like to paint a bee and he said yes. 

I asked him what color he wanted to make his bee. Yellow! I asked him what shape he wanted to make the bee. Round. I asked about stripes, he wanted black. I was shocked when he actually painted straight lines on the bee as making things recognizable to others is kind of new. The stripes didn't last long, though, since he soon started filling in the whole body black by making lines touch. Curious, I asked him why he used so much black. "To make it more darker, mommy!"

He added some tan colored wings and then later wanted to add more yellow stripes. This little painting experience reminded me of how important it is to watch the process as kids work and not just see the end product. I had a Kinder last week paint a bunch of really cool lines... and then cover them all up. If I hadn't seen him working, I wouldn't have had a clue about his ability to paint lines and control the brush.

Almost 4 year old's bee

Of course my youngest son wanted to paint as well. You can see above that he was using both a brush and fingers. My oldest pretty much always wanted to use a brush like he'd seen me use.

15 month old's bee painting.