Mount Mary Recycled Sculptures

Photo 111 of 365, taken April 26th:

Mount Mary College has been sending over some art students to work with our students on recycled artwork sculptures. Each classroom has made {or is still working on completing} 3-4 sculptures that will be on display at Kinderfest, an end of the year school festival. It has been a multi-day project for the kids. The stamping that I showed pictures of from Emma's classroom are part of this same project. It has been really neat because the kids have been using several different mediums, from painting to stamping cloth pieces to gluing various materials all in order for these cute characters to come together.

A few of the finished products out in the hallway.

Rebekah's group named their sculpture "King Noah". It is huge for us to have the opportunity to do these kind of art projects because we don't have an art teacher on staff at our school. Often any art that is done is completely because of special projects like this, or creativity the specific classroom teachers decide to incorporate into their lessons. I can't wait to see all of the sculptures "on parade" at the end of the year.

Happy Birthday, Mom!!

Today is my mom's birthday ~ Happy Birthday!!

Photo 105 of 365, taken April 19th:
The day started out rather uneventful, except for the small swamp in our backyard. Our house is a little lower than the surrounding homes so when we get a lot of rain, it tends to sit right between our house and our neighbor's. We feel a little bit like Shrek at times like these.

I went into Emma's classroom to help with a stamp making project. The kids were each given a small foam block and some pieces of foam with which they could design their own stamp. I think the project was modeled after an old fashion Chinese method of artistic stamping. The kids enjoyed working on the stamps, and came up with some neat ideas. Emma's is the geometric heart one, one of her friends made a cat, and the boy who sits next to her made Darth Vader.

After helping with art in Emma's room, I left to run some errands and was shocked that it was snowing! Snowing ~ On April 19th!!

At first, it was just coming down lightly in gentle flakes that looked pretty as they floated to the ground and melted immediately.

By the time I came out of Target though, the snow was actually sticking to surfaces. I had to text my mom and ask her if this was the birthday weather she had wished for. She responded that it was Mother Nature's gift to her. My mom has from time to time mentioned to me that she recalled years when it had snowed on her birthday. I couldn't remember any April 19th snows during my lifetime, but she surely proved me wrong today!

I then braved the snow back to school to help with painting pinch pots in Rebekah's class. I thought she was silly for wanting to wear this Snow Angel shirt this morning. I guess she proved me wrong too.

Happy Birthday, Mom! We are excited to see you and Dad this weekend.

We Finished It!

Yesterday, before we headed down to my parent's house for the rest of Spring vacation, Rebekah and I finished gluing and framing her classroom project for the German Immersion Foundation auction and dinner that is coming up.

Photo 90 of 365, taken April 3rd:

We ended up having 4 collages like this one. This one is my favorite. The kids worked so hard on them, they are each roughly the size of a poster board. I really wanted to matte each piece, but in the end decided against it because of framing costs. I thought they came out super bright, colorful and happy looking!

Rebekah's Recent Artwork

Rebekah has never loved doing things that require a lot of small motor concentration. She likes to draw and color, especially with markers, but even the things she really enjoys can fatigue her pretty easily, and she gets frustrated if she makes a mistake. Cutting and writing have reduced her to tears at times.

In January, Rebekah's teacher sent home a note saying how much her handwriting was improving. Then in February, Rebekah was so enthusiastic about the Black History unit they worked on. She brought home several pieces of artwork that are much more detailed than her previous work, and I can tell she is working hard to make her letters the appropriate size.

She loved telling us about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Ruby Bridges. She refers to them mostly by their first names only which is so cute.

It's just a small thing, but I am so thankful for her recent progress. She now asks me to sit down and write things with her! For the first time this year, writing out her valentines was actually FUN for her. She'll call to me when I am in the kitchen and ask me to spell something for her and then she'll proudly march into the kitchen with her notebook to show it to me...and she never used to enjoy doing this kind of thing at all!

Rebekah's sweet smelling hands sprinkled with jello sugar.

She is such a little muffin...when Alyssa asked her the other day if she wanted to go upstairs to play with her, Rebekah replied, No, I'm just going to stay by Mommy. She's my best friend. Now I can just hope she will feel that way forever :-)! I love her sweet little heart.

Leotard Fun

Recently at the gym, the girls were all given coloring pages to design their own leotards and I loved what the girls came up with!

These are Alyssa's designs. I'm not sure how I feel about wearing a bright yellow leo, but it looks pretty on paper!!



These are Emma's. I thought it was cute how they closely resemble her team leo. She couldn't think too far outside the box of what she currently wears for meets :-)



And these are Rebekah's, which turned out quite unlike any leotard I have ever seen before.



Maybe my very favorite leo: Alyssa's Get Your Grip On design. I think the idea of having helpful reminders printed in huge letters across the front of leos is something that could really take off! She should think about creating a whole line...