Trevor, seven, and Chloe, almost six, flew up alone from Studio City for their first visit to Nana on their own last week.  We called it "cousin camp."

Best time? The Saturday trip to Stinson Beach for Auggie's fourth birthday.  It was a great day in every way.  I stood (ankle-deep) in the surf for a total of five hours, watching four kids dart this way and that!  That sure keeps the old brain from sleeping. 

Before they arrived, Robert and I went to U-Haul and I bought two Grand Wardrobes and one small Wardrobe box.  We Gorilla-taped them together into a cardboard condo, and cut some windows. 

Wow, the four cousins played in this box contraption every day for hours.  It changed into various purposes from fort to submarine.  On Friday, I set up my long-planned painting project on top of the boxes. Not only was it just the right height for them to paint, they had lots of space, and I didn't have to put down newspaper for protection!

I highly recommend letting kids play in big boxes.  Cheap, safe, imagination-stimulating, fascinating.

I love children's art, so I bought four stretched canvases (10 X 14,) several big bottles of tempera paint, and as many small applicator bottles with pointed tips (in the plastic bottle section of the drugstore, the ones for applying hair color.)  First, I had them paint their canvases all black.  Once dry, I let them use the applicator bottles for brilliant patches of color and best of all, wonderful Jackson Pollock-y lines, lines, lines.

Now I have four fabulous paintings, which I plan to hang together in a rectangle on the wall.

Voila! Modern art made by real little moderns.