Con-cen-TRA-tion,
(clap, snap)
Keep in RHYthm,
(clap, snap)
Think of,
(clap, snap)
Words that
(clap, snap)
Start with
(clap, snap)
Letter 'A'...
(clap, snap)

This little childhood clapping game has been stuck in my head all day, because when we emerged from the house to get into the car to go to daycare/work, we discovered the insides of the windows of the car were drenched in...

Con-den-SA-tion

I loved clapping games as a child.  And jumprope games.  I know they still do them, because I was finagled into trying to remember the clapping pattern to "Miss Mary Mack" with the OmegaNiece.  Of course, being an adult, I totally flubbed the pattern every time, and we had a grand time falling down and giggling.

It's only a few more years before OmegaDotter starts re-teaching me those intricate patterns; so far, however, she hasn't brought any back home.

She does bring home reams and reams of artwork and projects.  We have a box that I put them into once they've been admired and have gathered into a heap on the dining table.  The thing is that she has suddenly, within the past few months, branched out in her artwork, and taken to doing some rather splendid and intricate drawings.

While at home, she can sit happily at the coffee table for hours, some kids' movie running as her lifetime soundtrack, concentrating deeply on her latest creation.

If it's an especially good creation, she will put it in her "book".  This is a fold-em-up horsie magnet set from Grandma Sharon that has been shanghaied into serving as a book cover for a wide variety of drawings that have been carefully taped in.  I have to "read" the book every few days.

When she's doing artwork at a restaurant, she's more than happy to share it with the wait staff and people sitting at nearby tables or booths.  Luckily, so far she's met people more than willing to oooh and ahhh and talk to her about, say, the horsie in the boat (yes, behind the purple climbing stuff is a horse being ridden by a red rider and sniffing a multi-colored flower).

She has just begun to put "context" into her pictures; thus the ocean in the bottom pic and the square splotch of "sky" in the top pic.

Also somewhat new is her "Do you remember, you would look at the mermaid, and you would say 'Oh, Mermaid!  Let's go to the ocean!", and then she would swim away and say, "Follow me!" and you would say..."  The layers of direction on what you are supposed to say can get quite deep, and, alas, Mommy and Daddy can't always remember all the script, but OmegaDotter reassures us, "It's okay, you can say something else!"

One of these days, we'll get to clapping games.

Technorati: clapping games, childhood, artwork, family, children