Several weeks ago, our incredibly awesome babysitter came over to spend a few hours with the girls while I went to Parent-Teacher conferences at Pea’s school. The girls both love it when L is coming to watch them. In fact, Pea had asked me just a day or two prior when L would come to her house “to play with me?”

When I returned home from conferences, L and I chatted for a few minutes. Her boyfriend just returned from several months of work on a dude ranch in Wyoming, and he was working at a local restaurant again. One that we frequent as a family. Quite often. But that’s going off on a tangent. L has become like family. We cherish her. I’ve never, ever known someone to walk into our home, kick off her shoes at the front door, go downstairs to the playroom and play. Hard. On the floor, on the girls’ level. It’s a sight to see.

Anyway, later on that night, when I went into Pea’s room to lower the glow of her nightlight and remove the enormous stack of books off of her bed, I found “The Art Book for Children” open to the page with the Mona Lisa on it. This book? I adore it. I’m all for teaching my girls about art. Early. Call it pretentious, I don’t care. Art was a powerful force in my own life from as early on as I can remember. So when I saw this book at my favorite local bookstore, I snatched it up. Even though it was the ‘display’ copy. It was the very last one, and I had to have it. Right then.

Underneath that book was another one of my favorites, “Touch Mona Lisa’s Hair.” It was open to the page with Mona Lisa on it, a lock of her hair transformed into glossy strands that the reader can actually stroke. There’s a whole series of these books, called “Touch the Art,” and we have them all. They are captivating, and when you talk about art coming to life, this is it. For a child, I think it’s a wonderfully tangible means to ‘getting’ art. A sensory experience always seems to stick in Pea’s mind, so much so that she asks for “Mr. Matisse’s book” daily.

That it was, apparently, L who made the connection in the two books, thrills me even more. Not only is she playing with the girls, but she’s reading to them. Teaching them. And I’m willing to bet that it’s the most fun exhilarating educational experience that Pea’s getting right now.

This whole occasion sent me to my computer the next morning, in search of coloring pages from the greats… Monet, Rivera, Modigliani, Seurat, and yes, even “Mr. Matisse.” And I found them, on a French site. (Shameless plug for The French here… I love them! Love, love, LOVE them!) I have no idea how I landed there, through a series of clicks, obviously. Their printables are free, and they have an enormous selection of coloring pages from famous artists. Your head will spin. And in addition, they have printables of other subjects that are equally as fantastic, such as everyone’s favorite pachyderm, “Babar,” Carnivale faces that you can color and then turn into masks, my personal favorite – “Le Petit Prince,” and even Thanksgiving coloring pages! And so I downloaded and printed up dozens of black and white drawings by some of my favorite artists, and set them in a stack on the dining room table, along with a fresh tub of markers, and let Pea go at it. And while she was coloring “Model with Unfinished Self-Portrait,” by David Hockney, I dug around a little bit more and stumbled onto a site called “Enchanted Learning,” and I was hooked. There are printables of any and everything you could possibly be searching for, for your child. There were picture dictionaries in French, German, Spanish, Russian and even Portuguese and Swedish! There are activities, printouts of the life cycles of butterflies, craft projects, geography lessons, activities according to language spoken or wishing to be spoken, lessons on inventors… I could go and on. But let’s just say that for $20 a year, I subscribed on the spot. I had to see what was in there, on this wonderful site. And I promise you, I was not disappointed. Not at all. I’ve been using the ‘lessons’ they have on there every single day since I signed on, just about a week ago. I am completely addicted. So much so that the other evening, my husband walked into the dining room, after the girls had turned in for the night, and found me hunched over a printout of Christo’s “The Gates,” furiously coloring it in with my three-year old’s markers.