MaxArt

Every morning we go to the basement to play, dance, and sometimes learn. The first thing I do is prep the chalk board with four letters on the first row and trace the dots letters on the second row, the last row is left blank so Max can write the letters himself without tracing anything.  We go over every letter, the sounds they make, use them in a word then sometimes put all four words we use into a sentence.  It's fun most of the time.  He recently learned to trace the letters properly without skipping a beat, I was so very proud.  

Max is enamored by airplanes and one of his most favorite things to do is to make people laugh.  Sunday dinner isn't complete without a Maximillian J. Knock Knock joke.  Once Max finishes with his letters he turns whichever one he can into an air shuttle or airplane.  I encourage the creativity, I'm a huge supporter of MaxArt. ;)

The other day he erased all the letters before even attempting to go over them and told me to close my eyes and wait.  I thought he was going to just complete the entire letter task without my help, to my surprise what he did was erase the board and draw an airplane, once he was done he asked me to open my eyes. 

I opened my eyes before he had completed his airplane and snuck this little photograph.

When he asked me to open my eyes my first reaction for some reason was to take a deep breath.  He asked, "Mom, what's wrong? why are you breathing?"

See I tell Max to take deep breathes when he is feeling sad or frustrated about something because that will help him to get focused and feel better.  I was a tiny bit surprised he didn't re-write the letters and once I heard him ask the question I realized that he was wondering why I wasn't commending him on his beautiful art piece, acknowledging and affirming his talent.  I looked into his eyes and I smiled. I smiled because his spirit is overwhelmingly beautiful and although he didn't do what I expected, what he did was pretty great.

I said, "Max, your airplane is great.  Thank you for surprising me with it.  Let's take a picture of it so we can put it into your scrapbook and erase it and get back to practicing your letters."  He asked if he can take the pictures, he did, was so proud of his work and then he joyously continued practicing the ABC's.

Namaste!