It's Elemental My Dear

Working With The Elements

In this case, the element is water with colour.  I am a painter by trade and by heart.  I am happiest with a paintbrush in my hand. Pure meditation, pure joy.  Yet, until a week ago I had never used water colours, well not properly.   Oil is my medium of choice.  So in a moment of inspiration,when I undertook to teach the children water colour paints, it was also learning curve for me.  I fell in love with painting all over again.  Water, we all need it, it connects everything and when it comes in the form of paint its beauty does the element justice.  It is also vibrant, easy to use and non toxic. Perfect for children.

Before beginning we had a brief discussion on the joys of painting, the different kinds of paint, why it should take a while to create a painting and the unique qualities of water colour paint.  The key point here is that, unlike other paint, it does not allow for rigid lines.  It does not provide the same control as oil or acrylic. Multiple lessons within one!

You will need:

• Decent quality water colour paper
• A board
• Gummed tape
• Water colours
• Palette
• Soft paint brushes (preferably although any type will work)
• Tray
• Clean water
• Patience!

It takes a while, but the blessing of our African sun is that it speeds up the drying time!

My art children did briefly moan about how long it takes but the end result quickly eroded the groaning.  They all agreed it was worth it, delighted with their own work and unique talent!

I did warn the few immensely self critical, controlling babes, that they get one piece of paper and only one for this project, hence they need to think carefully before applying the paint.  I was truly amazed at how it conquered the critic within.  Instead of the internal critic, an internal fan emerged acclaiming the melding colours as wonderful forms, surprise mystical beings on their paper!  This watery paint allowed them to release control and accept what happened, what is.  Too beautiful!

Make The Circle Bigger

"The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small." - Mother Theresa 

We moved to Johannesburg when I was 6 months pregnant with our first child. I knew no one save for my very busy sister in law.  No one.  It was not so bad until my babe was born.  A newborn, first born, alone, my husband at work and a child that would not, could not sleep.   I loved her so.  I was amazed at the expansion of my heart but simultaneously I was exhausted, lonely and depressed. Time passed, babe slept, another was born and friends were found.  I will however, never forget those desperate early days when I longed for company, for care and for understanding, I longed for my mother and my friends, for my tribe. Mine is not a unique story.

The nuclear parent is sold down the river.  We are told to believe that in our little high walled houses, armed with technology and disposable nappies, we will raise text book perfect kids and if we don't its mere failure on our part, not the system's.  Goodness. I threw away the books, binned the lot when I realised that was not going to be my reality.  Picture perfect it was/is not.  I needed people, people who had children, people who were raising other imperfect beings. I needed to widen the circle.

If there is one thing children are wonderful at its widening the circle.  They make friends wherever they go, they are best friends in an instant, some of these friendships extend to the end of the hour when we leave the park while others remain for years.  They approach people with freedom and fearlessness.  It is this interaction and the honest openness of their hearts from which we can learn.  I am not suggesting taking people home you meet in the park, nor throwing your doors open to hapless strangers (I am far too South African to entertain the notion) but rather to be a little less fearful of those we meet and send fewer folk into exile.

I now have a wonderful support system, partly hired (thank you Thandi and god bless your cotton socks!) and the rest are amazing friends on whom I lean often.  I even have surrogate grandparents who regularly fetch my child from school and periodically take my children out along with their own grandchildren!

Recently I was filling in a school application form for my youngest child,  they wanted to know a) who lived in our house (we needed very little space to answer) and b) who are the important people in her life (much more space required).  The thing is, few of the important people are relatives, they are friends who have taken on family importance.  Tribal status. It does take a village to raise a child.  To do it on your own is absolute insanity and unbelievably lonely.

 " We need to widen our circles and titles that relate us to each other rather than those that divide us into smaller and smaller groups, family groups, political groups, religious groups, racial groups.  I think this might be the only way to save the world from the meagerness of our own hearts. It took a child to show me this." - Elizabeth Lesser.

And talking of children and their wonderful perception of the world, this weeks craft is more of an art (yay!) which focuses on drawing with a little technique.  It is a fun thing to do with any child of drawing age (not scribbling age) for the results are unimportant.

The following figure drawing exercise I did with 8-11 year old children at Kairos School.  The children were divided into groups of 4, two children posed while two drew.  They then swoped tasks.  These are some of the wonderful results!

Each drawing is a wonderful, honest rendition of how they see.  Lets learn a little from the children we are raising.

The Games People Play

Virtues, Vices and Victories

I have been asked to paint a version of Snakes and Ladders on an exterior floor so that children and tipsy (or not so tipsy) adults may joyfully play this age old game.  It got me thinking about the games we play, and  in particular boardgames, which are very much part of our upbringing and that of our children.  We use them to cure boredom, teach skills and to bond.  They form part of our quintessential picture of the happy family, spending time together while moving pieces and throwing dice. My daughter has a huge fondness for Monopoly, a game which takes enormous amounts of time. I suspect for Alaska (as for many children) that it has less to do with winning and more to do with having us all together, as a happy family, captive for extensive periods of time! We are yet to finish a game. The thing is, as with so much in this day and age of globalisation, there is little thought as to where it all originates from and what the ultimate intention is behind the game.  Take Cluedo - what fun, but ultimately it centres around deceit and murder. Perhaps games are like fairytales, a way of engaging with the sinister or frivilous without enduring the consequences.  Learning the lessons without the pain.

So here are a few interesting facts about  a few of our favourite games...

Chess

Chess, as we all know, is a game of war, a simulation of battle.  According to Wikipedia it originated in India around the 6th century AD during the Gupta Empire (you may snigger), it was originally called Chaturanga (which also happens to be a yoga pose) which means 4 divisions and refers to the military 'cavalry, infantry, elephantry (my personal favourite) and chariotry".  It then made its way to Persia where it came to be called Shah (King) and upon winning the Persian would say "Shah Mat (King is helpless), Check Mate.

While we all know how impossibly strategic it is and what a wonderful game it is for children to play for both mathematical and tactical thinking, it does rely on the annihilation of one's opponent, which brings me to the next game...

Monopoly

Monopoly was created by an American and patented in 1904 under the title The Landlords Game.  It was originally developed to "illustrate an economic principle, namely the Georgiest concept of a single land value tax". The Landlords Game sought to demonstrate, in a clear and concrete way, that rents enriched landlords and impoverished the tenants.  Lovely.  The patent was then bought by the Parker Brothers (game giants) in the 30's and slowly evolved to appear as it does today.

Again, much like chess, to win one has to (economically) annihilate one's opponent.  A harsh lesson for a child.

Moving across the ocean to England and its wonderfully ridiculous, but taken rather seriously, game of Tiddlywinks!

Tiddlywinks

Tiddlywinks originated in Victorian England as an adult parlour game (nudge nudge wink wink) and was trademarked in 1888.  A craze swept the country as adults and children alike played it.  Both Cambridge and Oxford University formed Tiddlywinks Societies holding inter university tournaments!  Only recently did Oxford disband their team.  While there is some skill in it, it seems to me to be a largely light hearted game, encouraging gentle competition in children, a game of joy, and thus a little incongruent with major intellectual institutions.  What fun.

And back to where we started, India and...

 Snakes and Ladders

 I have to say that this game in its concept and lessons is my absolute favourite.  It might be all the yoga, or that it is so beautifully simple in its skill level (I am horrendous at Chess!), but there is a poetry to it that appeal,s somewhat like a beautifully told folk tale.

Snakes and Ladders presents life's victories and pitfalls.  The ladders represent  virtues and the snakes are the vices.  It originated in India in the 6th century and was also known as' Moksha Patam' or 'Paramapada Sopaanam' (ladder to salvation).  It reflected Indian consciousness  of daily existence and karmic belief.  It was introduced to Victorian England in the late 1800's and the original English game had squares naming virtues - faith, reliability, generosity, asceticism, and squares of vice -disobedience, vanity,theft, drunkenness, deb, lust and murder.

Personally, I am glad that we returned to its simpler less rigid version, imagine having to explain that to your children!  Bring on the karma!

And now for this weeks wonderful craft filled with the majesty of fairytale, archetypes, magic and the beauty of playing games (admittedly sans board).

Meet the Monarchy...

And every King or Queen needs a touch of glamourous magic...

And may all those that rule do so with compassion (not annihilation) and with a gentle hand, holding a colourful wand with magic light and bright.

Fairytales and Flying

Some time ago I read a small sweet book called "Oscar And The Lady In Pink" by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. Its story is of a dying child coming to grips with parents, father christmas, life, death and god which unfolds through his relationship with his nurse (dressed in pink).  I laughed and cried.  While it is essentially an adult book his easy simple style of writing and the tale it tells is gentle enough to be read to children, which  I proceeded to do only to be met with two sad little faces who implored me not too go on because "it is just too sad mommy!".  So I put the book away.  The following night my girls had a friend sleepover and the book they chose at bedtime was Hansel and Gretel (again!).  Half way through reading it I put the book down and asked them how it is possible that a tale of children being abandoned (that being preferable to their parents watching them starve to death) in a forest without food, water or shelter, then being entrapped, forced into slavery and kept in a cage (yes, the captor is murdered) is less horrid than a boy who is loved, cared for and rather funny even if he is gravely ill? 'We like Hansel and Gretel' was the meek answer.

Now I know the psychology behind fairytales, the Jungian explanation of it being an expression of archetypes hidden in a collective unconscious, the notion of good triumphing over evil, the moral tale of making the right decision, feeding a child's imagination and the notion of it being a fictional account and therefore less scary. To quote G. K. Chesterton "fairytales do not tell children that dragons exist.  Children already know that.  Fairytales tell children that dragons can be killed." As a child I had reoccurring nightmares about being in the cage yet still would ask my mother to read the book.

I recently chanced upon another explanation which I really like.  It comes from yet another of my spiritual/self help books which is written with such beauty it reads like a novel:  "Hideous Damsels, Sleeping Giants, and Strange Angels may seem the stuff of fairy tales, but fairy tales are really the stories of our own lives - stories that dip beneath the surface and venture into the deeper, darker landscapes.  That's why children love them.  Children are still at home in the soul realm.  They are in touch with both the fearesome and fantastic nature of life.  They are growing every day - learning, changing and evolving.  Go back to back to the myths you loved as a child and reread them from the perspective of an adult.  Take note of the ways in which the evil witches and nasty gnomes always appear and always lead the children back into life, all the wiser for having confronted them." (Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser).  And from that perspective Hansel and Gretel almost seems a tale of wisdom to me. I also understand that one story stands in a magical world of fairies and dragons and the other in a far more tangible world where children really do die far too early, but as an adult and a mother, the gentle tale of a boy coming to terms with life is far lovelier than the horror of Hansel and Gretel's predicament.

With that said if you watch your children walk and play, throughout the day they slip in and out of a world of fairtytale.  A walk is an adventure of wizards and princesses, the jungle gym and castle and volcano.  Perhaps that is why some of the most successful craft activities are ones that provide accessories for dress up. Wings, crowns, tails...

And almost keeping within a theme...

this weeks craft activity is a fun journey of flight..

Birds Of A Feather Fly To Distant Lands (or around the jungle gym!)

What wonderful exciting results!!

While I always encourage the use of imagination (far too many rules and regulations in life as it is!) it is also a nice talking point as to why birds have particular colours on their feathers or why their beaks are a certain shape and why they are magical creatures.  It is also a good idea to encourage them fly as a flock and then out on their own (but at this tender age, not too high or too far.).

Batman, Betty and Pink Jessie,

When I decide to take one of the crafts I have guided at the Oakleaf into my art classes at home I am often amazed at how much time it takes us to complete!  By my immense powers of deduction I realise how much time I must spend on the craft with the children at the Oakleaf where the afternoon disappears in a hazy blur of busyness. I do enjoy the calm leisure of the art lessons where I am part of their conversations and can listen to the stories that ensue.  Its often wildly entertaining but it also brings life to the projects we do.  The lion gains personality and prey, the birds fly to pink clouds where fairies roam and the dolls gain family, friends and foes.

The dolls were one such, admittedly immense, project.  There is a lot of preparation involved (as always, I underestimated the sheer quantity of time it would take!) which, unless your child knows how to sew on a machine, as mine are slowly learning to do, you will have to do ahead of time.  The results are  worth it for they create a unique childhood doll with which to play.

Say hello to the process that delivered Batman, Betty and Pink Jessie...

In  my opinion that we often underestimate what our children are capable of.  Admittedly I sometimes overestimate but that is okay because one simply modifies.  I have had many parents tell me their child 'is too young to do that', only to be be proved wrong.  Unless we try we don't know where their ability truly lies and it is only through assisted attempts that they master things, that we master things.

Back to the amazing dolls - I have yet another Angel anecdote - I decided to quickly sew closed her dolls open edges on the machine (I was in a rush).  She sat on her shins on the chair next to me patiently while studying the workings of the machine.  When I finished she piped up "Oh, so that is how all the dolls in the world are made!".  Bless her Angel heart.