Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Natalie and Coloring - Take II

Little Miss Abigail touched my computer and deleted my first, and nearly complete first attempt...grrrrr.

So, Natalie has taken to coloring.  I have introduced coloring several times in the past but the girls have shown only passing interest.  Just in the past few days, Natalie has developed quite a passion.

When I started the first post, she was sitting to my left, bending over (practically climbing on) the dining room table and intensely working on Cookie Monster in her Elmo coloring book. 


She has started covering nearly the whole page instead of just a  few passing scribbles.  And, as of today, she has started something I am very pleased with - changing colors.  Before, her pictures were mostly monochromatic and she would usually keep the same color for multiple pages.





Today, she is using one color, then putting it down and picking a different color to use on the same page - sometimes two or three colors. 


 

She's not using "appropriate" color choices yet, ie. Elmo is not red or Grover Blue.  But then again, I think a red, black, and orange flying Grover is pretty cool!

Abby shows no such inclination towards coloring.  I did manage to get her to color this:



after I told her I would take a picture of it (she saw me taking pictures of Natalie's).  She is still in your basic scribble, scribble, scribble, done stage.

It's not really that surprising as it fits with their personalities.  Natalie tends to be better at the fine motor activities that require more patience - like coloring, stringing beads and puzzles.  She easily focused on her coloring for at least 15 minutes just now - maybe longer.  Abby tends to be busier, not really in a hyperactive way, just busier.  She will sit and focus for long periods of time on pretend play: feed her babies, stir soup, etc.  But even this is busy.  There's lots of moving around, talking and action.  I think she likes/needs to input more than Natalie.  It may explain why she also sings all.day.long.  Really.  If she sings her ABC once a day, she sings them 100 times.  Or hums them, or do-do-do's them or starts and stops or starts in the middle of them.  Twinkle, twinkle is also being a favorite.  She really does vocalize almost all day.  It's actually very adorable.  Mema can actually tell who is who it is now because with minutes Abby identifies herself by breaking into song.

As I mentioned once before, Abby appears to have excellent pitch for a 2.5 year old.  I am very pleased.  As I also said before, I hadn't really heard Natalie sing enough to really judge but it wasn't looking that good.  Natalie is starting to sing her ABC's more - and it's still not looking so good.  I'm afraid twin Grammy winners are not likely in their future.  However, Natalie does love to dance, and clearly, likes to color, so there's great hope for visual arts in her future.

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