🎨 Sticky Fingers, Soft Hearts
- sherala808
- Oct 23
- 2 min read
Red and yellow swirl together on a child’s palm before the brush even finds paper.
The air hums with giggles, small disagreements, and the rhythmic scrape of brushes across thick white sheets.
At Ka Hana Pono, this is what learning looks like: curiosity, mess, laughter, and patience blending together until color becomes conversation.
🌿 The Language of Color
When children mix colors, they are also learning to mix emotions.
What happens when red meets blue? When excitement touches calm?
In every brushstroke, they’re testing balance—too much water, not enough space, a drip here, a splash there.
This is emotional literacy at work.
Before children have all the words for their inner worlds, they have color.
And before they can name frustration or joy, they have the safe freedom to express both through movement and creation.
The canvas holds what language cannot.
And our job, as teachers and caregivers, is to hold the child as they learn that nothing inside them is too much.
🌺 Collaboration as Co-Regulation
Art time isn’t only self-expression—it’s social practice.
Children learn to share space, tools, and ideas.
Sometimes that means two paintbrushes reach for the same cup of water at once.
Sometimes it means waiting for a turn, or wiping a spill without blame.
This is where pono becomes visible: each child learning to stay in right relationship—with themselves, with others, with the materials in front of them.
When a teacher kneels beside them, not to fix but to guide with warmth, the message is clear:
“You can make a mess and still be loved. You can make repairs and still belong.”
🌈 The Soft Heart of Creation
Every creation ends the same way—tiny hands reaching out, eyes bright with pride, a voice asking, “Can I show you what I made?”
This is the sacred moment when process meets witness.
When we pause to admire their work—not for perfection, but for presence—we tell them that their voice matters.
That their colors have meaning.
That love can be expressed through glue-covered fingers and paper edges still drying in the sun.
These are the moments that shape emotional courage.
These are the soft hearts being formed through art.
A Practice for Families
Sometime this week, create with your child.
It doesn’t need to be fancy—finger paint, sidewalk chalk, sand.
Let them lead. Let yourself be messy.
When you notice a drip or spill, take a breath before you clean it up.
Ask, “What do you like about what you made?”
Let your child’s answer be the art itself.
Written with aloha by
🌿 Angelica Paulo Friedmann, LMFT — Director, Ka Hana Pono Preschool (Hale‘iwa)
Because art is how children learn the language of their hearts.
#KaHanaPono #Pā‘aniMeAloha #CreativeChildhood #PlayBasedLearning
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