Murals

Neither one of my kids are big on coloring. I have bought tons of coloring books over the years and they sit unused. I have tried sitting with them to color or adding it to their school work. For example they are to write in their fieldwork journal and draw and color a picture about what they did on their field trip. My daughter will draw pictures but refuses to color them. My son refuses to draw without a lot of prompting and help from me, coloring is just not even in the cards at this time. Now my kids are only 6 and 8 so I am not expecting too much of them really, I just want them to slow down a little and be more careful with what they are doing. My thought process is to have them work on fine motor coordination and improve their writing skills. It must be the former Occupational Therapist in me.

Last summer I came up with the idea of doing a forest animal mural.


What I did was search the computer for all the forest animals coloring pictures. I also had the children decide what to include and how the mural should look. My daughter surprised me and really got into it. My son on the other hand still needed lots of hand holding. I made this a school art project that took us several weeks to complete.I did get him to do cut out the tree, leaves and apples so we worked on his cutting skills instead.





Next my daughter decided own her own that she wanted to do a mural about the Ocean. She choose the coloring pages that I printed off the computer, and I helped her with the lay out. She worked on it, on and off all winter. To be honest I wasn't sure she would ever complete it:) I think I missed an opportunity to do a Ocean unit study. We hung this one up in the bathroom:) My son only helped with the painting of the background.





Next my daughter decided to work on a Mystical creature mural. One of her favorite topics. So this summer she began working on the mural. I found all of the mystical creatures that she wanted to include on the computer. There were some creatures she asked for I had never heard of! She reads a lot of Greek and Roman mythology. She came up with the entire layout on her own. I only helped when she asked. This one she did in record time. I was so proud of her. She has also decided she wants to do a unit study on Mystical creatures. We start this unit study and lap book this week. My daughter wanted this mural to hang over her bed! Didn't she do a great job. If you look closely she included a Elf in the tree dropping drops of red paint on the fairies. Because she says Elves are always playing tricks. I have to say after hearing her talk so much about this mural and the creatures on it, I am looking for to studying this topic myself. I think my daughter will be teaching me more than I will be teaching her! Isn't that the wonderful thing about homeschooling!