he draws

In order to keep Henri occupied while I took a shower this morning, I decided to tear off a large piece from a roll of paper and give him his markers & crayons.

It has been my goal to teach Henri how to write his name sometime this year. He's had the letter H down ever since Aunt Alice taught him at age two and a half, and he has left that mark all over our house to our chagrin. However, Henri has had very little interested in learning how to write any other letter of the alphabet. In fact, he doesn't care to use markers, crayons, or pencils at all. Coloring? Nope. When asked to color a picture, he quickly scribbles over it with one color and declares he is finished.

I've been wondering how long it would take him to move into these fine motor skills. Over the past few Sundays at church, he has taken a liking to scribbling in his notebook. Then last week, he wanted to work on some letters for about a minute, and he started to try his lower case e, n, and r. After he tried a letter, he'd point to it and say, "My n looks like a P!" And it did.

Then came this morning. About a minute or so after I jumped in the shower, Henri knocked on the door announcing that he had drawn a robot. He was clearly excited to show me, and I told him that I was excited to see it after my shower. He shouted through the door again that his robot had one hundred arms. A few more minutes of quiet went by. I began to picture marker and crayon markings all over my walls, furniture, and floors (wouldn't be the first time), and I wondered if I should have left him alone with them.

After I dried off, Henri proudly showed me this.

This is Henri's robot. He says it has one hundred arms, two legs, angry eyes, and a mad mouth. He also has a sling & a gun that he holds with his legs to get the bad guys with.

I was so surprised. Really, I have NEVER seen him draw anything before. Sometimes he makes a circle, declares it to be a bug, and then scribbles all over it. But this was new.

What a joy to see my boy do something new at age 4 and a half!

We're thinking about homeschooling, and I've had this fear that teaching writing will become a dull chore for Henri. I want him to love learning. This drawing today brings me some hope that he will learn to write his name someday when he is ready.