Tracing the Hands
Tracing the hands—this is by far the most I have aided my child with this rainy season. What else should kids be doing? Either draw, write, play ‘catch me’ or ‘hide and seek,’ or any other game or task that could be done indoors. The thought that the rain have eventually stopped was erased as it came back yet again on Friday afternoon.
So we have traced hands with my sweetie pie. Not only the left hand, the right hand, but again the left hand and the right hand over and over until the pages of an old notebook that is no longer in use have been sketched on. I kept teaching her what to do but she couldn’t seem to get the hang of the art. That is, tracing out the hands. When she does it alone, she just puts near her hand the pencil then as if she is tracing. I was amused at my less than 3 year old child. You just have to trace the hand! What do think you’re doing, darling? I have asked her. She just smiled and giggled.
One good thing I liked about hand tracing is that you don’t need to have a great skill in order to do it. And even you could show it easily to any child. But it proved challenging to teach the art to my child. It seemed very simple but not simple enough hahaha. But I won’t give up until I could see that she does it alone without my help. Meantime, we will look for other surfaces to fill in. It seems, we can just turn to the shelf and check which papers are not important anymore—exam papers that are no longer used, printed papers, pad papers, back of receipts, etc. We do not seem to be running out of them! Though I must be warned, I know right? That we had to use only the scratch paper and not the back of receipts. My child might think that it is okay to use any receipt.
It is clear that whenever we traced hands, my child would get her mind working, “Why can’t I do it on my own?” And I know when the time finally comes that she realizes how it is done, she would wonder why she wasn’t able to grasp it in the first place. Or maybe, mommy is just not good enough a teacher for her. Hehehe. Google it, how to teach hand tracing to a child younger than 3?
How would you finish up the drawing then? You draw the nails, right? And the grid lines somewhere on the hands. We are making ours very simple. After all, I am not a drawing genius. I would just be a fan of those geniuses. Brown, we color the hand brown. But I would notice that our color is very Filipino. Kayumangging-kayumanggi. I would tell us that that is over colored brown! Though kayumangging-kayumanggi is something to be proud on. But how do we create a skin-toned color? Okay, we will just color lightly. Hmmm… So much to learn about this art! But still I know I will just be tracing hands with my kid for the while.
If there is something I am interested in but not good at, that would be at drawing. I don’t frustrate over it because it doesn’t matter that what I know are just the basics thought in Daycare. What matters more though at the moment is for me to be able to let my sweetheart do it on her own.
To make it more entertaining, we’ve drawn the nails differently and colored them with varying colors. My child would even just draw eyes, nose, and mouth to the back of the palm part to make the hand look like a head, which is like a hand head. Another hehehe. We will progress to tracing other objects. Okay, I am good when it came to drawing geometric shapes. Up to that only but at least I have something good at at drawing. Circle, triangle, square, etc. I even know the difference between such figures. I just fail at optical illusion.
Sorry, I won’t be posting any of the pictures of the drawings. I am afraid I will be labeling that private property haha. Not that I have posted pictures recently. Most of my articles are only words and I could only supply pictures sparingly. Am I lazy? Maybe, maybe not. Hehe. I am just shy with our current drawing. But I can assure you, they are looking like hands. Small hands.
