Child Directed Learning

I've been playing with the concept of child directed learning. That's where I follow Claire's lead on what she wants to learn. Even if I provide a new activity for her I try to leave her free to do what she wants with it. It's actually harder than I thought it would be. Today I decided to brave the finger paints again. While I was digging everything out Claire grabbed the colored pencils out of the drawer and motioned for me to open them. While I set up she happily dumped them out over the paper for finger painting. When I was ready I quickly picked them all up and put them away telling her it was time to do art. (Um... mom... I was trying to do art. Can I please have the pencils back!)

Since she hates getting her hands messy (unless it involves eating) I decided we would try stamping. I gave her a dish with 4 different colors of finger paint and 4 pieces of carrot to dip in the paint and stamp. She took one look at the setup, gave me a look and promptly flung the carrots on the ground. (Paints and food mom??? What are you thinking? And I don't even like to eat carrots.) Realizing there might need to be a little parental direction I picked up a carrot, dipped it in the paint and stamped it on the paper. At this point she was intrigued. She grabbed the carrot and proceeded to dip it into all of the paint. A little voice in my head was screaming "Ahhh, don't mix the paint like that. I gave you a carrot for each color." But I kept my mouth shut. It was a good thing since she produced lovely tie dyed circles and probably had more fun then if mommy had told her the right way.

We both enjoyed ourselves till the very end when she decided she was done and wanted to run through the house holding things covered in paint. I had to revert back from cool mommy to evil mommy as I forced an end of project clean up. Child directed learning stops the moment the fingerpaints start heading towards the couch!