Rock Collecting

November 3, 2015

I had been thinking of doing “rock painting” with my kiddo for a long time now… I had all the supplies, except for the rocks. So we went on for a rock collecting outing!

I had been thinking how to go about it? Whether I should walk around the neighbourhood and randomly collect whatever I find suitable for painting or go to some construction site where pebbles and stones are lying around in abundance!

Luckily, one day I decided to take my pooch for his morning walk (a ritual followed by my husband everyday). As we went down the street I saw a fresh bed of small rocks and stones laid down on the roadside. Our sector is coming up with a new park and the rock bed was laid to cover up the area for the construction of pavement / parking lot maybe.

Whatever maybe the reason… my purpose was solved. I started looking around for good pieces and trust me – there were MANY !!! As Leo went about his ‘business’ I started collecting the little rocks! Suddenly, I thought it would be better if I came here with Ram and let him pick n choose what he likes! So I decided to come down in the evening, as he was in school right now.

So, in the evening I got him ready and told him all about what we were going to do. We got the beach bucket to collect the little treasure! By this time he was all excited and held the bucket in his hand all the time. As we reached the site, he looked around and somehow seemed a little confused to me… or maybe he was just thinking what to do, which stones to collect or maybe even how to go about the whole thing!

At that point, I helped him by picking up a stone which looked like an egg. I showed it to him and picked another one and said, “See, this is a little owl, we’ll make his eyes and beak”. He slowly got the idea and started picking the stones, sometimes showing me a tiger, or a giraffe – and even a car!!

I just needed to trigger the thought process and he took it from there. Within 10 minutes, the bucket was full but the ideas were galore and he needed another bucket!! I told him, lets finish painting these and then we’ll come back for more!!