I consider myself to be a very artsy person. I think that I am pretty creative and my final products are pretty sweet. I am also a perfectionist.
As of late I have been trying to be a better teacher. More patient, explaining things better (nope, repeating things louder and slower doesn't always do the trick), and most difficult of all, focusing more on the process.
In order to do this I have enlisted the help of my favorite seven year old (such a willing and trusting soul). I've proposed a few special products for the two of us to work on, the projects are very detail orientated, take a fair amount of time and if not careful can blow up spectacularly.
About a month ago while in the midst of making books for Christmas presents I thought it might be fun for my favorite seven year old to make one as well. She loves to write and is becoming quite the reader.
I explained each section of the project as we got to it and then was completely hands off. She asked several questions and I explained to the best of my ability (only once using "Do you trust me" as an answer) and she was off again, a book sewing machine.
When she choose the colors for the spine of the book and the cover they did not match at all. The pages were not sewn straight, the text block was a bit crooked but she was sooooo proud of herself. So proud that she shot out of bed during story time to place the book somewhere that her parents would have to trip over just to make sure they saw it.
Today we spent the day at Como Zoo. She loves to use my camera when I have it out so I thought that it would be perfect to give her the camera for the day and let her take pictures of whatever she wanted. She had a blast! In about an hour and a half she had taken 75 pictures. I found myself trying to discourage her from taking some of the pictures, but managed to stop myself pretty quick. It is digital after all.
After she shot to her heart's content we headed to a local coffee shop and downloaded all of her images and she chose the ones that she wanted to get printed. After that we went to an art store to buy mat board.
She then laid out the pictures how she thought they would look best, we cut the mat board and mounted all of her pictures. She drew the lines and did most of the cutting so things were not perfect, but again she was so proud of herself.
During each of these projects I would catch myself wanting to snatch what she was working on because she wasn't doing it "right." The colors didn't match, the lines weren't straight, the holes weren't perfectly inline. But she didn't care, she was having a blast.
I got lost in the woods, hell, I didn't even know there were trees when I have tried to teach before. I'm not saying that I am perfect, but I am learning to focus on the learning, there is time for technique later.
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