Saturday, January 26, 2008

This is universal, isn't it?

I did this as a kid. Erin did it copiously. Noah did it too. And this is the array Sophie and Fiona worked on together the other day, and then photographed. Taking one's vast pencil crayon collection and sorting it into different parts of the spectrum and then creating the "best" order for the different shades in each part of the spectrum, agonizing over where to include the silver, the white, the black, the shades of taupe and terra cotta, experimenting with the different start- and end-points that allow one to best integrate the odd-ball colours .... it is something all children do, isn't it? Tell me it's not just something weird that runs in my family.

10 comments:

  1. Only one of my children does it (and has to keep the pencils that way all the time!), the other two are quite happy to have the colours in any order. Nice photo though :)

    Sarah.

    and hello, by the way! I discovered your blog after it got a mention on the suzukichat list the other day and am reading regularly now, with an interest in suzuki and in your homeschooling (and a slight envy of your snow!). We also home educated our kids for a while but recently they all chose to go to school.

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  2. I used to do that as a kid. *haha* But back then, we had no computers or other more exciting things to do apart from school! *haha*

    I even remember exploring and taking apart my piano - my mom worked and my elder brothers were in school, so I was bored alone at home most of the day.

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  3. Ahem.....I still do that.... :)

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  4. Anonymous10:17 am

    Occasionally I help at a friend's Montessori preschool. There she has a material called "color boxes" used by the children to help them develop their sense of color discrimination. For example: http://www.nienhuis.nl/us/005300/third_box_of_color_tablets.htm
    While the color boxes are lovely, I find it interesting that children will often come up with their own way of developing this - as illustrated in your post photo here.

    I liked doing this too!

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  5. Montessori kids do that with coloured tablets:)

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  6. LOL I still do it when trying to put away David's markers...placing them up in the correct color order and not knowing where to place certain colors.

    I love the look of that and would be tempted to frame it as abstract art :-)

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  7. I'm not sure if I did that with colored pencils as a kid, but I know I'm still doing it now... I organized my closet like that last night, complete with struggles over where to put the tans, silvers, whites and blacks.

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  8. I do that too! But my kids don't. Actually two of them are red/green colour blind, so that may have something to do with it!

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  9. My oldest dd (12 now) did that with bricks of colored beeswax. The others, not so much, but I think they have each done it at least once. :)

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  10. Anonymous7:02 am

    I did this a lot as a kid, the worrying where to put white and black etc. Okay, I still do it. My kids don't. I read somewhere it was a sign of giftedness. Not that you need silly odd signs, but there it is.

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