One of my favorite things about the one-year-old crowd is that you never know what it is that they are going to find fascinating.  You could be in a warehouse of toys and somehow, I believe, my children would gravitate toward the used plastic food containers with lids.

Behold, the CoolWhip Free containers:

 

I’m not going to lie.  We eat a lot of CoolWhip Free.  Actually, I think I eat most of it.  Of course, it is consumed in the name of providing my children with life lessons of opening and closing containers and putting certain objects inside and outside of said containers until the cows come home–so it is a sacrifice I feel is worth the extra poundage.  Add eight fat crayons to these glorious buckets-o-fun and you’ve got yourself near 30 minutes of unfettered creative play.

 

We open them; we close them.  We shake them; we carry them.  We take the crayons out; we put the crayons back in.  Of course, like all things around Walmer Street–there are a few rules.  The crayons do not leave the picnic table unless they are in a closed container.  You may walk around with them in the closed container, but once the container is opened you must return to the table.  The other day a crayon inadvertently rolled off the table and Tessa reeeeached for it while still trying to keep her bottom on the bench.   Tess = rule-follower.

 

We grab our crayons by the fistful and scribble like mad.  We are mostly into the “dotting” method of coloring whereby we slam the fistful of crayons into the paper to get the most dramatic granular, broken, and flickering effect – qualities not unlike those found in the impressionist works.

The picnic table has taken a few hits that are a necessary consequence of the “dramatic” arts that is our coloring, but we like to think of it as an extension of our art.

We’re serious about this, you know.  Verrrry serious, indeed.