This morning I got up dumb early for no reason at all and couldn't go back to sleep. I was pretty darn groggy, but fortunately for me, today's morning activity was a nice and low-key one: Superhero Drawing Studio.
This activity started out as just "Drawing", but I found that making something too open-ended for kids made them less able to focus on the task at hand. Limitations make great walls to bounce off of. I consider my ethnicity to be "Comic Book Nerd", and those genes must have passed off to my kids because Lyric is CRAZY about superheroes (Zephyr is not as crazy about them, but still enjoys them). So I made "Drawing" into "Comic Book Drawing Studio", but that was a little too aspirational at the time for the kids (I do intend to go back to it sometime, though). So we took a step back and just made it "Superhero Drawing Studio".
All you need for Superhero drawing studio is paper and writing implements, and you draw superheroes with your kids. Drawing with your kids is a great way to teach them stuff: drawing stuff like "how to draw a stick figure", sure, but also parts of the body, perspective, light and shadow, etc.
Today Lyric was really annoying Zephyr, and Zephyr was in the trap of dealing with someone feeding off negative attention. The more Zephyr got frustrated with Lyric, the more Lyric wanted to be around Zephyr to provoke him more. Zephyr was saying how he wanted to punch Lyric in the face, so I separated the kids and took Zephyr to have him draw someone getting punched in the face instead.
This was what I drew, and I tried to show Zephyr foreshortening - how one hand looks way bigger because it's closer to the viewer. But then of course, Lyric wanted to get in on what we were doing, so I started making a drawing with Lyric and having him pick out the colors we should use for it, and Zephyr snuck off to go make his own drawing in the other room.
Lyric picked what colors should go where and then tried his hands at the pants and gloves, and then deigned the two "wings" on the back. It came out pretty good, I think! We got to talk about what a visor was, the differences between metal and plastic, and how cool "racing stripes" are. Lyric wanted it to be part orange because it's his favorite color and part purple because it's my favorite color.
Meanwhile, Zephyr had gone back to his room and tried to draw Zomboss from Plants Vs. Zombies (after checking in with me that we could draw supervillains as well... totally allowed.) He went on the iPad to get a reference and then went at it. I'm digging how he's drawing beady eyes.
By the way, that's just what Zephyr wanted to wear to school today. He's into wearing ties.