We were sitting and painting / coloring the other day. Sid was doing a self portrait. After drawing his face, hands and legs with a black crayon he decided to color it in. He thought hard as he chose his crayons. “I think i want blue eyes today” he announced and colored his eyes a stunning blue. Then came the dilemma…”what color am i?” he asked aloud as he rummaged through the box of crayons. “Not peach” he decided, discarding different shades of peach. “Try brown” Nish proffered. “What brown am i?” Sid picked up a bunch of browns and help it against his hand. “Not this one…this is like coffee…this is like mud…this is very dark…this is also not right” Finally he looked like he had nearly given up. Then suddenly he said..”But i think coffee colored brown skin looks lovely!” Decision made, he quickly colored himself a ‘coffee brown’ and proudly handed his work to me 🙂
I am planning to have them do a few more portraits and think through colour a little more. Maybe read Shel Silverstein’s poem on Colors to them and see how that goes 🙂