Drawing

Here’s a picture we drew together in lab time this week.

Up until now Bright Eyes has refused point blank to even hold crayons or pens. I think he finds fine motor hand work so difficult that he gets overwhelmed.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been ‘scaffolding*’ this kind of work by saying “Let’s do it together”, moving him on to my lap, holding the crayon with him and drawing. I’ve gradually lessened my control of the crayon so that he’s making most of the effort.

I was pretty pleased that when we decided to draw fire, he grabbed the yellow crayon and scribbled really hard. I coloured red on top, and then he added orange. Then I invited him to draw himself in the picture. He hardly hesitated! I was delighted.

“Sad face. Bright Eyes is getting in the fire!” he said. I added the fire engine, and we both drew water going all over the fire. Then he asked me to change the sad face to a happy face because the fire was out! What a great story!

*scaffolding is an RDI term which means giving enough help in the task so that it is achievable, yet still just challenging enough. So it might be getting a T-shirt turned the right way around before a child puts their arms into it, or helping someone work a puzzle out by doing all the edge pieces first... there are many examples...