What does one do on a wet and rainy day? You could go outdoors and play in the puddles and catch raindrops on your tongue. But maybe you don’t want to get wet. I put all the crayons on a table and a lot of plain white paper. The only thing I asked my 2-year old group to do was, “draw a picture of a rainy day.”
Was I ever surprised at the results! Six children drew that morning. Every child drew a very bright picture with green, purple, blue, orange and some brown. Not a surprise; every child likes bright colors. The surprise came when five of the children picked up a black crayon and scribbled over the top of the very pretty colors and decided that the picture was finished.
“How interesting” I thought; to be so young and to associate the color black as a dreary or sad color. So what was the next step? Different day, same scenario. The table full of crayons, plain paper but a new request. “Draw me a picture of a sunny day.”
Only 4 children were there of the sunny day drawing. Three of the 4 children colored with multi bright crayons and that was all. One child colored with brown over all of the page.
Try is experiment with your children. I would be interested in know how they interpret a rainy and sunny day.
For more rainy day activities, visit our TCW Pinterest page. We have neat ideas for kids of all ages!
Shirley is a Toddler Teacher at The Children's Workshop in North Kingstown. She joined our team when the North Kingstown center opened in Spring 2012. After fifteen years of working with children as an educator and a girl scout leader, Shirley loves how children can remember things you talk about months later.