Red Chalk!!!!

There comes a moment when you wonder why you allow your children to have free access to art resources such as pencils, crayons, paper, glue and chalk.  

Today that moment came for me when I turned around from cleaning the oven to find that my normally reliable three-year-old had not only drawn with red chalk over the blackboard and his face and hands, but also over his sister's clothes, several pieces of furniture and flooring, and a cream rug!

Granted, the cream rug is usually pretty grubby anyway, as it's just inside the front door (stupid place to have a cream rug), and I count myself as reasonably easy going about "creative mess" (though I try to keep it reasonably contained and supervised) but that didn't stop my gasp of horror as I saw the mess.  

My reaction?  "C. what were you thinking? (shouted) Quick, lets get some cloths and try to clean this up (more measured tone - let's try to turn this into a positive lesson!)."  C's response: "I'm sorry about that mummy, I think I was having a silly five minutes with my brain switched off.  I am sorry about that."

Sadly, I'm not sure that the chalk will come out of the rug, this photo is taken after ten minutes of scrubbing.  Not long after that I had to give it a rest, as my activities leaning over the side of the bathtub attracted the attention of the little ones, and they decided that they wanted to get in for a bath, so the rug had to be removed elsewhere for further work later.

I don't think I'll be changing the free access to art resources allowed in the house, but I might be keeping a closer eye on the children!