"Anything?" "Yes, anything."

I had some time to kill last weekend and popped into my favorite art supply store to browse. Right there by the front door was a stack of pre-stretched, pre-primed canvases under a sign reading, "70% off." I had to do a double take, but I snapped up two large canvases normally priced at $100 for a mere $30. I don't recall the exact dimensions, but they are larger than the kids.

I leaned one against the wall outdoors and within a few minutes it looked like this:

A little later, it looked like this:

Are you kidding me? This is a masterpiece and it was mostly created by a group of boys who rarely engage in art projects indoors. When the canvas was finished, they kept right on going:

The kids are really digging on being allowed to paint anything outdoors. "Anything?" "Yes, anything." And thus, most surfaces have hosted least a smudge of paint during these past couple months. Yesterday, we had several alumni students at school for our Pre-K play (I'll try to get the video up in the next couple days). They had never played in our new outdoor classroom and explored it thoroughly afterwards, putting it through the kind of paces only graders can manage.

It had been raining for the preceding 12 hours and Eli shared one of his discoveries while wiping his hands on his pants, "You know Teacher Tom, when it rains it makes all this paint runny. It gets on everything." He was right. I felt a little sorry for the parents who had to return to the office yesterday afternoon. I hope their colleagues didn't ride them too much for the paint stains on their suits.

Of course, rain also means we get to paint everything again, even the canvas: