Today, my five year old was laying on the living room floor, vigorously coloring a group of Disney princesses in her new coloring and sticker book.
She's in kindergarten. It's been fun to listen to her this year as she begins to figure out how to spell words, perform basic math problems, and write sentences. She's a pretty typical kid, though. Ask her what the best part of her day is, and she'll reply "recess" without even thinking twice.
So here she is, laying on the floor, coloring a picture of Snow White feeding a horse an apple. The apple, of course, was red. The horse, brown. Snow White's hair, black. Yet, all of these colors were running together because she was not coloring in the lines. My first thought when I saw this was to tell her that she knew how to color right and she should stay in the lines. But then I thought about what I was doing. I was telling her to stay within the limits on something that really didn't even matter. More than likely, the picture would go on the refrigerator for a few days before it was replaced with a new one she colored.
So instead, what I told her was this.
"You know, if you're going to be creative and color outside the lines, you might want to choose another color. Everyone's seen brown horses. No one's ever seen green ones."
She stopped. Then she looked up at me, grinned from ear to ear, and asked if it was OK to color however she wanted. So remember, this is just a page out of a coloring book. She's five. And she thinks she has to conform this coloring to the desires of the world instead of the ideas that come naturally to a child her age.
After being told that it was in fact OK, we ended with a picture of a camouflaged horse standing in a black forest, being fed an orange apple by a blonde Snow White. While she colored, she made decisions about what colors she was choosing. "This color is crazy. No one's ever seen an orange apple before. I'm choosing this color because I like it."
She used her passions, coupled with what was fun for her, to make something entirely new. She didn't worry about the fact that she wasn't coloring in the lines, because she was creating a new picture. The way she was thinking was allowing her to think freely and experiment. She got to see what happened when colors mixed together, and also what happened when she used a color that was too dark on areas that were covered with fine details. She made this picture her own. Instead of squashing ideas, she got to create.
I am so proud of this picture that I think it's going to stay on the refrigerator for a little longer than just a few days.
