On Thursday afternoons, I teach kindergarten art at my daughter’s school. For our first class in September, we started at the beginning: prehistoric art. We studied the cave paintings at Lascaux, France, c. 17.000 B.C. The ancient cave artists painted vibrant buffalo and horses and used lanterns carved from stone to illuminate their work in the dark recesses of the caves. The lanterns’ long handles kept hands at a safe distance from the oil that burned in the reservoir. The children and I made our own cave by hanging blankets under a stair landing. For our lanterns, we scooped out the seeds from several butternut squash halves. The children painted canvases with mud. Time flew by and soon it was time to clean up.
Ever since that day, when I show up on the playground to pick up my daughter, I am greeted with leg hugs from the kindergartners. Even from the shy little boy who’s barely noticed me for two years. On that first art day, he told me his cave painting would be of his home. As I watched him work, I waited for a roof and chimney to appear on his canvas. Instead, he painted the line of the Blue Ridge Mountains–the backdrop of our town.
Ancient cavemen surely would have understood that little boy. 🙂
i agree…he certainly understood them. Nice writing whit.