Sturdy for Common Things

Swatch: The Girl Who Loved Color + Face Painting Fun

“In a place where colors ran wild, there lived a girl who was wilder still. Her name was Swatch, and she was a color tamer. She was small, but she was not afraid.”

Open Swatch: The Girl Who Loved Color by Julia Denos (public library) and experience a stampede of color.  Young Swatch is a collector. Like most kids who are passionate about collecting, they try the best they can to accumulate as much of their desired object as possible. But unlike most kids, Swatch collects color. She enthusiastically plucks, nets, tames, and traps an array of every color she comes across. When she calls out their name “Bravest Green”, “Just Laid Blue”, and “Rumble-Tumble Pink” the colors come to her and she bottles them up to be added to the rainbow of colors already captured. But one day, instead of calling out the name of “Yellowest Yellow”, a coveted shade, she asks the color instead of calling it to her. “Yellowest yellow.. would you like to climb into this jar?” The shade politely declines and instead of plucking it up nonetheless, she leaves it be and something spectacular happens.

Swatch: The Girl Who Loved Color is not only visually stunning, but the story stars a strong, courageous female character- We can never ever have enough strong female characters in books for young children- and demonstrates what happens when we let go and allow creativity to flourish. A big thank you to my buddy Erinn Batykefer from Library as Incubator Project, for putting this book on my radar this past winter. It has not only become a favorite story in our home, but an inspiration for many color adventures since reading it.

 

FACE PAINTING FUN

Throughout the story, Swatch: The Girl Who Loved Color, Swatch seems to always have paint on her face. I thought expanding on this detail through face painting would be fun platform to talk about color mixing and also provide the opportunity for the kids to paint a canvas they are very familiar with, their own faces!

MATERIALS

• Face lotion or lotion without fragrance or dyes
• Food coloring or liquid watercolors
• Watercolor tray or whatever you have on hand for paint mixing
• Paintbrushes

I used this DIY face paint tutorial for making the paints. You can swap liquid washable watercolors for the food coloring if you prefer. The food coloring might take a day or two to wash off. Using a water color tray, the kids mixed up some colors with food coloring and face lotion. Then I set up a mirror and let them have at it. Here’s our set up:

I have never seen these two smile and laugh during an art project like when they were face painting. It was a playful, color-filled sensory experience!

After face painting, my oldest decided she wanted to LOOK JUST LIKE SWATCH and quickly changed into clothing similar to Swatch’s outfit in the book. Then, she asked for a jar to catch colors in and ran around the yard for a good part of the evening role playing the character of Swatch. She continues to this day to talk about color names and fantasize about colors.

Swatch encouraged us to see colors in a new way and allow them, and our imaginations, run wild. Now more than ever, Lorelei makes up names for colors she sees. I’ve been hesitant to return a book that has sparked so much wonder in my girls, but tomorrow it’s going back to the library. It’s time to let Swatch be free and work her magic in our community.

For more color mixing magic that would also pair well with Swatch: The Girl Who Loved Color, check out this Mix it Up! project.

 

 

Source of book reviewed: Borrowed from my local public library!