June 12th is celebrated as Philippine Independence day. Although this is not really the day the country did not literally freed itself from its colonizers, this is commemorated as the day that the Philippine flag was first raised as a way to prove to the Spaniards that we can govern ourselves and deserve to be recognized as a sovereign country. Although a lot of things happened after this event in 1898, this day is celebrated and recognized in schools by way of displaying the Philippine national flag in establishments. We in our household had a little Independence Day art activity.
I originally did not intend on having an activity today but my little one has been under the weather for the last few days. We've gone to the pedia and we were advised have some rest for the rest of the week. That means no narrations, no out of door activities, no swimming lessons. But the little one could not just stay in bed and still wanted to do some reading and a few lessons today. We had a bit of copywork since that does not involve any talking on her part. And after that, we had a little art activity related to the national holiday.
I thought of just having her do the art stuff by herself while I process the admin tasks with our homeschool provider but I decided to put off the processing of the papers for a bit and enjoyed that little bonding moment with my little one. We even invited her dad to join in with us. It looked like he was busy with work too but I'm so glad he stopped for a bit to join us too. It was like a little family art bonding.
I was feeling so proud of her with this flag artwork of hers. She usually would ask what she needs to do and would ask me some steps on how to do it. This time, I only instructed her to first visualize how she wants the flag to look like. Of course, we discussed the different parts of the flag and what they mean. Then, I asked her how she wants to execute that vision. She said she wanted to use watercolor and instead of using her paintbrushes, she will just use her fingers to smear the paint onto the paper. This is something very new for her because she usually does not like having her hands dirty.
She first did some big dots of blue and red on the flag. It looked so beautiful. She was really immersed in it, giving comments here and there about how each color changes every time she adds in a new dot into the flag. She loved the effect that the finger art did. When she completed the flag, she painted the background light blue since the flag was raised high up in the air according to her. She even added that flag pole.
Her dad did a quick drawing of flag because he had to get back to his work. I really appreciated how he took his time to spend a few moments with us. These things he does makes him a really great father. I on the other hand had no idea how I'll draw the flag for today's activity. When I asked my daughter to visualize what she wants her flag to look like, I still haven't visualized mine. But one thing's for sure, I wanted to try to do pointillism. So that's what I did. I made a bit of some wrinkle effect to show the folds for when the wind touches the flag. I know I still need some work on the shading and the creases. But oh well, I enjoyed doing pointillism for the first time.
After our art activity, the little person had no choice but to take her much needed rest. She just can't help but keep talking and walking around and play with the cats. Kids will just be kids. The moment they start feeling okay, they go about announcing they're no longer sick. Now, we're back where we started. I don't think we'll be out and about in a few days. Hopefully she feels better soon.
