Day 286: sculpting

04/13/2011

Day 286: sculpting

Sam, Avery and I did some sculpting today. Really Sam has been working on this and playing around with this idea for about a week now. I was not intervening or asking her about it at all until today was she was excited to show me and Avery, and asked for us to help her.

So how do you sculpt in your backyard with mud, rocks and sticks if you are a three year old?

Follow these steps (as described and displayed to me by Sam) -

Gather sticks of all sizes. "Big ones are really important but little ones are good too".
If you can't get the sticks into the ground use water to make mud. "Lots of water from the rain bucket. But sometimes we need to water the flowers and grass too". This step takes a long time and may create some seriously muddy children!
Then start sticking in your sticks. "Sometimes mommy needs to help with the big ones".
Gather rocks. "This is my job mommy".
Place the rocks around the sculpture. Again, "This is my job mommy. But Avery can help me".
Keep adding things to the sculpture, "water it so maybe it will grow", and "never take it down".

This is what you end up with!

I love that she wants to keep it up and never take it down. It has been awesome to watch her over the last week trying out different places in the yard until she finally picked this one. And watching her work with Avery, gather, place, water, adjust, gather some more and build some more was really neat!