Love & Worksheets

[Image description: A lovely watercolor image of an owl, next to a quote that reads, “Too-wit-too-true: ‘As a young child I fell in love with birds and everything about birds thanks to all the colouring-in pages I was given to do…’ said no ornithologist ever.” The quote is by Clare Caro, and the artist is Jean Haines. There are many pictures of coloring pages of birds at the bottom of the image too. End description.]

This made me laugh out loud.

When kids love something, they’ll explore it in every facet of their play if you don’t get in their way! You don’t have to turn it into worksheets.

(Yes, even for academic objective purposes. I have a kid with whom I’m working on fine motor control. It would theoretically achieve working on fine motor control to have him color a picture of a car. It would also theoretically achieve working on fine motor control to do what we did last week…we took hot wheels cars, tempera paint, and Q-tips and he painted the cars to look however he wanted! Both are based in his special interest. But one is more memorable, gets him more involved, is more multisensory, requires more creative thinking.)

(Yes, some kids love and seek out worksheets, especially if they’ve been taught to. I’m talking about situations in which an adult is assigning them work.)