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.

Your Thoughts? Process vs. Product and other ramblings...

So this is what's been running through my head all day today.

What do you do when a project just isn't turning out how you planned?  Do you hang it in the hallway "as is"?  Do you add another class and try to figure out how to improve it?  Or do you say "good try" and move on?

My son examining his first painting :)

My current Kindergarten and 1st grade projects are just not exactly what I had in mind.  Kindergarteners learned about lines and looked at Paul Klee's "The Golden Fish" and "Fish Magic" before drawing fish pictures with lots of crayon lines.  They painted over to make a wax resist.  1st grade students were painting fish starting with primary and neutral paint to practice mixing colors.  The main objectives (practicing lines and mixing paint colors) were met but I don't know if the average hallway passerby would have any clue what they were looking at!  The students like the projects, and they look kinda cool, most just don't look so much like fish.  I wasn't thinking about the backslide that happens over the summer so my first graders' painting skills were a little behind last May and most of the Kinders still had some scribbles in them!

The process is more important than the product.  But the product is a little important.  I don't know if I'm nervous about hanging it in the hallway because I still feel like a self-conscious new teacher (even though this is my 3rd year) and I'm afraid people will think I don't know what I'm doing or what!

Anyway, it just got me thinking.  Not every product is going to turn out exactly how you pictured when you try something new so I wondered what other people do when they are in a similar situation.  I know I'm not the only one! :)