Mandala with Toddler

(Craft)

Mandala is a circular structure with radial symmetry. The design radiates out symmetrically from the center. It is one of nature’s more wonderful and perfect configurations. Mandala can be found in flowers, tree rings, snowflakes, fruits and a lot more.

The mandala is, intriguing enough, the first form that toddlers start drawing as they move from doodles to more realistic drawing. Not as complex as mandalas found in nature, but a simple circular shape with lines radiating inward and/or outward. This first mandala artwork usually developed to drawings and paintings of suns, faces, and animals. Isn’t this amazing?!

Materials:

-paper

-pencil/marker

-scissors

-ruler

-stapler

-tricolor dried pasta

Instruction:

-draw lines on a landsape view of A4 size paper with ruler and pencil with same width, cut them with scissors. We will need 5 strips for this project.

-staple together 2 strips of paper and form a big circle.

-cut 1 strip into half, staple together with a strip of paper and form a smaller circle.

-take 1 strip and staple its ends together to form another circle.

-lastly take the remaining half strip and staple its end to form the smallest inner circle.

-ask your toddler to sort the color and placed those dried pasta on different circle area.

The creation of a mandala requires time to complete. Each mandala contains many symbols that must be perfectly reproduced each time the mandala is created. Instead of using sand as I know Tibetan monks use, we prepared a mandala for her to make using tricolor pasta: red, green and yellow. It began as a sorting color game.

Once finished, I stood back, ceremoniously say thank you for her creating this mandala for us, I smiled and nod in approval as she toss and sweep her mandala into the glass jars. For the monks, this action also symbolizes the cycle of life.

I learnt differently though. As I watched her amazingly sorted those color into geometrical circle I have provided, I can’t stop believing how grown up she has been. It was so precious the ‘art’ she made and I was thinking about clinging to its result. But she taught me something important, how life is ‘in the now.’ For her, might be as the monk does, life is ‘in the now.’ Nothing needs to be ceremonious. Life is life. As it is. It was done, so it was time to move on. I thought I taught her about mandala, but I just realized then, she taught me about being ‘in the now.’

Thank you, my teacher, who happens to be as young as 2.5 years old.

#toddler #mandala #pasta