Liv Inspires

So today we’ve had a fun activity with Liv! She was not at all in a mood to go anywhere anymore in the afternoon, so I came up with this funny idea- yes, as you may have guessed it (since the title says so)- Let’s paint on our tea set!

To explain things a little bit. Liv once got a tiny tea set from her grandmother, but it stayed at their house and is by now broken most of the parts (not by Liv, though!). Once we got the fun idea to make a picnic at home, while Liv’s friend was staying here… that was sooo great. We needed a tea set for that. So I took out an old retro tea set, which I don’t know why I have still not gotten rid of, and I’m not going to miss if it should break. Needles to say, the picnic in our living room was a huge success. Ever since, the tea set stayed on a tray for Liv to play with whenever she wants.

I might wanna add, I kind of like the fact with this tea set that she’s playing with something real, in the spirit of Montessori pedagogic.

Nevertheless, it was always bugging me, that the chocolate brown tea set (though I do like the retro touch) is kind of boring for a little girl. Not that I’d think a child has to play only with bright, colourful, happy-looking toys. Not at all. Still, I thought they were boring.

So here we are, Liv just refused all my suggestions where to go and what to do and bugs me about watching something on the computer (we don’t have a TV). And suddenly I come up with this idea, start taking out the colours and prepare the whole thing, and Liv gets immediately hooked. And I’m happy.

I admit, though I know she likes painting, I was a bit surprised how much she was into the whole thing. She was sooo committed to it from beginning till end.

I also admit, I did not think this activity quite through, since it was more of an act in the moment. I had only 3 colours I found at home that could paint on ceramics. One of them a dark royal blue, which was not too visible on the dark brown tea set. As a paradox though, this was the colour that Liv was most into in the end, end she ended up painting it everywhere. It was also the one colour of the 3, that does not really go down by washing. Our hands (and Liv’s belly, since I tried to rescue her shirt last minute from getting very blue) are still pretty blue.

Yep, we also didn’t get changed for painting. My bad, I should have foreseen it. But Liv just got so hooked so quickly, grabbing immediately a brush and starting to paint as soon as I got it out, I didn’t want to interrupt her anymore. It seemed to be ok in the beginning, she was pretty calm, painting only on the set. But in the end… well, what is there to add. :-)

Of course, we were not going for something “aesthetically perfect” here. Although, I pretty much love the outcome (and it’s pretty perfect to me, but then I guess, who wouldn’t love the work of their child)! I really wanted to leave her to decorate her tea set. I only added here and there something, more for the sake of encouraging her to paint and try different things, rather than trying to make something really.

Liv really liked the fact that we were working with special colours, with special brushes. She really got the hang of that word.

Oh well. So much fun. So much happiness. From such a crazy idea. I should really try to come up with more activities that are like this. But try to be more prepared next time, haha.