The Sharpie Table

Let’s see…paperwork: caught up on; inboxes: emptied; Practice Thanksgiving: cleaned up from;  long-term projects: reasonably under control; and children: in bed—which means I can get down here and write my blog post of the day.  I like this time of day.  

We have a new table.  Or rather we have an old table that’s been put in a new place, causing an uproar of activity with my children.   Sometimes changing just a small thing makes a big difference with children.

They like to draw and their favorite implements for drawing are sharpies.   You know, Sharpies—those indelible, permanent under the most strenuous of conditions, markers.   And I can’t blame them, they do write so nicely.   I had a collection of rainbow colors and any time we had a need for a color for something like the calendar on the refrigerator, they would want to use the markers for other things.    So  I just left them out.

There was a little table in the corner of the dining room that wasn’t used much by the children, even though markers were there in a bin, so I made it the table for the brailler with the ream of special braille card stock paper and some arts and crafts things from a blind kit that came in the mail.    The table was used, but only by my daughter for her braille work for the most part.   And then they got interested in using the paper and the sharpies and the only real place to draw was the breakfast nook table.

Children aren’t the best at staying within the bounds of the paper and I found myself using the adhesive remover to remove the sharpie marks from the table on multiple occasions.  One time there was even a lot of red on the floor from a very vigorous full-sheet red coloring project my daughter decided to do.    Something had to be done.

I thought about it and realized there was another child-sized, infrequently upstairs that had a white, almost white board-ish surface on it that I could put beside the first table.   My husband and I shifted the adult table over by a few inches, making the off-center celing light more off-center in yet another direction, so that there was ample walking space around the now double table setup.   And then we called the children in.

“From here on out”, I started and then explained that while the nook table, floor and all other surfaces were completely off limits for any sharpie work, this one little white table was completely available for all their coloring needs.   I told them it was okay if the sharpie got onto the table and not to worry about it.    But would it come off, my daughter asked?  Yes, we could clean it off if we wanted to, I told her.

And we left it at that.   And for two days my children have monopolized that table, sometimes both working together or more likely both crammed in together working on their own projects.   The other very popular item is a pair of scissors available at the table.   My son will draw something and then cut it out.   My daughter is doing something, although I don’t really know what, but it involves doing a lot of cutting paper into very small pieces, most of which end up on the floor.  

I think she had to clean up the floor four times today alone, using the hand sweeper to get the very small pieces into the dustpan before she could eat or do another activity she wanted to do.  She kept coming back though, including just a few more cutting things right at bedtime.  Hopefully the table, sharpies, scissors and glue stick will keep them occupied a lot in the coming weeks as we move into the holidays.

The Big Boy Update:  My son agonized over writing about fifteen short sentences tonight.   I should have had him do them earlier in the day but I was working on my own things.   He got the Parts of a Volcano project finished though that was sent home for him to work on since he didn’t have the privilege of going on the field trip on Friday.  Hopefully he’ll be proud of his work when he brings it in tomorrow to show his teachers.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been working on her thank you notes for birthday presents she received.   She first would take a piece of paper and braille at short message to the person.   Then she would draw a picture on the paper.    I know her vision is poor, but she was drawing some things that I could easily tell, like a girl with long hair (a princess) and a party with balloons all around.   She’s been more interested in multiple colors lately which I hope means she’s able to do better at color recognition.   She got done with nine hand-typed and drawn cards over the last two days and was proud of each and every one.