Preschool "art"

From the LJ archives

My son Alexander is in preschool. His teacher, when she was Elizabeth's preschool teacher, told us not to ask small children "what is it?" when they show us their art, but rather say "Tell me about that" so we don't offend them because the blob of red and yellow paint is obviously mommy and daddy driving them to get ice cream on a Thursday afternoon after preschool (or whatever).
So a couple of weeks ago, I pick up Alexander from preschool and he has a big sheet of paper that he has painted on. On the left side of the paper is a red splotch of paint. Down the middle of the paper is a brown streak. On the right side of the paper is a yellow splotch and below that a green splotch. I say to Alexander "tell me about this painting", expecting to hear something about maybe trees and piles of leaves or some autumnal theme. Alexander points at the red splotch "That's red" and his finger continues to the other colors "and that's brown and that's yellow and that's green. I accidentally got some yellow and green on the brown."
That's it. Just colors. My son apparently has a very literal grasp of art.
Fast forward to just a couple of days ago. I again am picking him up from preschool. This time he has a "craft" consisting of a scrap of blue construction paper with a long white piece of yarn glued to it.
"Hey Alexander, tell me about this."
"Well," he starts (it actually sounds like he's making it up as he goes along). "This white stuff here is glue; it's still wet. And that's a string. And I glued the string to this blue paper."
Art is not his strong skill. It's not that he has no imagination. Quite the opposite. This kid can take a piece of cooked spaghetti and sit at the kitchen table spinning it around, look up and say "It's a rocket ship riding a skateboard!"

Preschool "art"