Antlers

We made this project last week.

Steffie, who's very much like a little butterfly herself, was really excited about coloring it. She did ask for a little help cutting it out.

"I am having trouble cutting the antlers," she told me. "I couldn't decide what color to make them, either. What color are the antlers on a butterfly?"

"I have seen different colors of antennas on different flying critters," I told her. "Most butterflies I've seen just have black ones, they look kind of like tiny wires."
That's how I correct their grammar, by repeating the word they want back to them and just ignoring improper word usage. Seems to work.

"Oh yeah. Antenna. Antlers starts with A, too. I get them mixed up."

She giggled. 

And then she colored the antlers pink.

Another Art Attack (and kids are funny)

It's supposed to be a torn paper art project. I cheated and used scissors for the flower, tearing just wasn't working the way I wanted it to. I was making it in a hurry in a five minute window of time so the kids would have something to look at when they made their own.

Anna made this one for her sister, her sister was absent yesterday. They are obsessed with the game Dandy's World. I've heard it's not really suitable for kids, but a lot of mine apparently play the game. I don't know much about it, but a lot of Anna's art looks like this.

Steffie's is the purple large and pink small chicken above. 

As she worked, she explained. 
"This is the mommy bird. And this is the baby bird."
Leah wanted to know where the daddy bird was.
"Oh he's not there. He passed out."
I raised internal eyebrows. 
Should I ask her what that means? 
But I didn't have to, Leah asked, "What does passed out mean?"
"Oh, he's dead. That's what you say when a daddy dies. You say he passed out."

She said it in a matter of fact way, no sadness or concern in her voice. Just a thing that happens. I left it alone, she is very confident that everything she says and everything she knows is 100% the facts. I think a lot of that comes from having Bailey as a big sister. That child invented confidence.

Leah made this one after asking if it was okay to draw wings since the example didn't have wings. I said that everyone gets to make the project the way they want to, so wings are fine. And that she could give them hats and tennis shoes if she wanted. She found that hilarious and said, "But birds don't wear clothes!" and giggled again. Kindergarten is such a fun age. Although you couldn't pay me enough to wrangle a classroom full of five year olds all day every day. Takes someone special to do that for sure.

Benji has a speech impediment. It's sometimes hard to understand what he wants.
He's been working hard to try to correct it. 
Trouble with the letter L, with R and various combinations. 
Haven't ever heard a child who speaks this way, .

Last time we got out the model magic, he wanted to know, "When do we get bee-yack?"
My brain short-circuited.
"What?"
He tried again, carefully.
"Bee-yack."

I finally figured out he wanted black clay. 
That's what he said, "Bee-yak quay."

Benji has been starting conversations lately with, "Can I tell you just one thing?" When we answer yes, he tells us a thing. "My teacher gave me a tattoo because I was a good kid today. " Or, "One time my brother barfed in the bathtub. "

He brought me a book he had checked out from the school library.
Quite a popular series these days. The one he chose had dinosaurs on it. Of course. 
He's a five year old boy.

He showed me the cover and said, "Who wee-owe win?"
I pointed to the largest dino and guessed, "This one."
He answered with, "Pweepayah to be pwoovin wong." 
::snort::
Then he turned pages and explained why the smaller dino would win in a battle between the two.

He was behaving like the five year old that he is, and I had to speak to him multiple times about the same issues like climbing on his brother, stealing toys from the other kids, not helping clean up messes that he personally made.

After the 5th (6th? 27th?) time I talked to him, he told James that he does NOT like me. I heard him. 
"I don't wike Miss Susan!"

James ran to tell me what he said. I saw Benji watching from across the room. So I  smiled broadly and said, "That's okay. He doesn't have to like me. I still like him, though."

Later, he approached me.
"Can I tell just you one thing?"
I said, "Sure."
He said, "I wuv you, Miss Susan. "

The little weasel.

Artfully Done

I thought it might be fun to show you a few things we've been working on.

In random order...
This is the inspiration for the project, but we all know that we're not trying to copy anything. We make our own art!

Inspiration photo

Paper towel bunnies and eggs and a little plastic cat.
Don't ask, I don't have the answer.

There was some discussion/argument between some kids about the eggs. As children often do, they decided to ask the adults in the room the hard question. 
"Do bunnies lay eggs?"

When I answered no, the kids all said, "But! What about Easter eggs!?!"

Oh boy.

Since I try not to miss those teachable moments, I had to explain that Jesus hatched from an egg on Easter and saw his shadow and there were six more weeks of winter.


*see footnote below

This is a mouse. Trust me.

Bailey made a rose from Model Magic.

When asked, the sculptor didn't know if this was an alligator or a crocodile. 
I explained the easiest way to tell them apart is that an alligator will see you later while a crocodile will see you in a while.

 

Can you see the dragon in these clouds? He's in the center, more or less. His nose is facing to the right, and you can only see his neck and forearms.  The rest of him was hidden behind some dark clouds.
The kids were really excited to spot him.

Some straws and pre-printed Temu flowers from a pre-pandemic supply order. This is from Lori, age 5.

Steffie made a flower pot with her flowers and straws and a paper cup.

Steffie's card. She's on the left. That's me on the right, the orange lady with the long legs.
I remember loving the rainbow colors as a kid.
Kids today are still the same.

Origami bookmark. I showed the kids how to fold them and mentioned that my husband likes using that kind of bookmark. 

So Benji made this and handed it to me, saying, "Here. Give this to the man who lives at your house."

Book Monster. 
Same fold as the bookmark above with a couple additions.
This came from Alina, age 8, who loves making monsters of all kinds.

And here's a jellyfish from James. 
He's in the 2nd grade and loves sculpting things.

I try to have stuff out for them every day. Sometimes it's a guided project, sometimes it's just a bunch of things to have fun with. 

The hard part isn't the cleanup, as you might imagine.
The hard part is finding time to take photos, make sure no kid faces/identifying information are in them and then manage to get them posted.

Have you done anything creative lately? 
Remember, it's important! 
NO ONE wants to become spiritually constipated!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*footnote: it's funny... but no, I did not tell them Jesus saw his shadow.
I'm not a complete idiot.

BOLO

 A couple young humans (neither of them were humans I'm responsible for) stopped by our program this afternoon while we were setting things up.

"Can you hang up this missing poster?"

"Sure."

They handed the poster to William and skipped off down the hall.
We spent the next 10 minutes or so trying to figure out what the critter was while we finished setting up.

William thought it was an alligator.

I thought at first maybe it was a cat, but then changed my guess to skunk because of what looks like a scent cloud behind it.

We had to wait for more information. 
Waited until 3:30 when the older kids arrived post after-school enrichment classes.

Turns out Coco is a large lizard who lives in a locked tank on the 2nd floor of the school. The class pet.

Coco mysteriously disappeared from that locked tank sometime on Thursday night as he wasn't in the tank on Friday morning.

There was no school on Friday, and we heard that all the teachers and school staff who were there for the 'teacher work day' spent part of their day looking for Coco.

The kids were worried because the tank has a heat lamp and it's been a little chilly lately.
"What if he freezes?"

Then, one of the kids running past our program area after the classes were over this afternoon stopped to tell the kids at the art table, "They found Coco!!!"

There was a big cheer. 
The girl who had told us Coco was found said that Coco was found on a school bus.
Which of course means someone deliberately took Coco out of the tank and tried to take him home.

A crime.
Not sure if the abduction or the artist's rendering was the bigger crime.

::snort:::

Artfully done...

Some kid art to make you smile...


Bailey drew her parents having a picnic. 




When I bring out the project of the day, they ask, "Can I do that?" Of course the answer is always yes. And I love that most of the time, they're insistent on making it their own way.

We did the famous q tip skeletons last week. 
I didn't get a photo of each one, but here are a couple.

This was a kindergartner's concept of a human skeleton.
The only help I provided was cutting the q tips.

This one is Steffie's. 
She's Bailey's baby sister. Kindergarten kiddo.
It's a cat skeleton. 
So if you've ever wondered what it looks like inside a cat, well, wonder no more.

I offered the great pumpkin project, too.

 

Another seven year old artist.

Another Bailey art project. 
It's a cat pumpkin. In case you couldn't tell.
Both girls are obsessed with cats.

I am incredibly frustrated at trying to get the photos to be right side up. 
If you couldn't tell, I gave up and just posted the damn things.

Andre was very disappointed that he was picked up before he had a chance to make his skeleton. So I sent him home with supplies and a big smile on his face.

This week we're making spooky trees from paper lunch bags, surprise drawings (I did some examples over the weekend, here's one) and some bats and a haunted house. 

The kids are having fun with the projects, but the smallest people get frustrated trying to glue things. I always tell them I will sit with them and help them until they get it done, and that it's fine to get glue on your fingers. 

They're so cute, they really are.

What if we just let them be creative?

If you're one of the people who reads my blog you know I love fostering creativity in the kids I work with.

My feelings about this, like so many other parts of my job, are rooted in my own childhood. My wish to treat kids with respect. To appreciate what's unique about each one of them, meet them wherever they are, and build a relationship.

In this case, it's about art. More specifically, the ability to create art.

Growing up, I didn't have things at home to use for creative purposes. No paint. No construction paper, regular paper, colored pencils, scissors, art books. Didn't knit, didn't sew, didn't have a creative outlet.

Sometimes a craft craze** would visit our town, and most of my friends and their moms would go to someone's house and make whatever it was. Bring a few bucks, some cookies, do some socializing and make and take a little project.

**the people who lived in that town were like lemmings back then. 
They're still like lemmings.
In so many ways. 
It's weird. 

Mass church migrations... they're searching for something they're not finding, and instead of figuring out that what they're looking for doesn't exist, they think changing churches is going to help them find it. 

Traveling salesmen come to town and sell them heat alarms for their doublewides. (hint... if the temperature in the ceiling is high enough to set them off, your trailer has already burned). Walk in bathtubs. Magical wall sockets that help you "save electricity." Multilevel marketing... Amway, Melelauca, Avon... All the guy has to do is get one person to buy, then everyone else lines up holding their cash out and begging to be the next sucker. 

This is how my parents ended up buying a time share. One of their teacher acquaintances bought in, and the lemming effect took over. It wasn't long before most of the people Dad had worked with also bought into the time share scam. And while I appreciate that we were able to use it, it was a large monthly payment for my parents. Like 400 a month for 'fees'. Dad CALLED the time share company and asked how he could get one.

Oh shit, I'm digressing.

So the fee for these little crafty evenings was usually just the cost of supplies.
There was some lady who taught people how to weave fish from ribbon and make a mobile. 

A 'cold ceramic' class (it was really just plaster stuff) where people got to paint and decorate little figurines. 

A bunch of ornaments made from 'swiss straw'. Colored strips of a straw-like material, held on to styrofoam balls with wig pins and with beads added here and there. Crass and tasteless. 
I still wanted to make them, though. I wanted to feel the colored strips sliding through my fingers, hold the styrofoam and push the pins into it.

Mom made mop dolls. She bought makeup (blush and eye shadow) for this tacky doll project, but I couldn't get a package of new underwear. Nope, three pairs to last me a whole school year. Probably the reason I have at least 30 pair now. More digression.

Mom and her craft pack of church ladies made many interesting things. 
Most of those things were really cheesy, and I wouldn't be interested in them now, but I was starved for things like that then.

Once when Mom was getting ready for one of her evenings out, I asked if I could go, too. 
The answer, "We can't afford it."

So Mom went to little classes, nominally priced for her, but much too expensive to include her daughter. 

It didn't hurt my feelings as much then as it does now, funnily enough. I mean, I didn't like being told I wasn't welcome, but I was so accustomed to not having things I wanted (not a whole lot of things I needed, either) that it didn't upset me. Now, I just add it to the ever-growing list of things that kept my spirits down and let me know I wasn't a person of value to them.

Those memories did cause me to do things differently for my own children, though. 
If they asked for specific art supplies or crafty stuff, I got it for them. When they had the urge to create, we had whatever they needed to do so.

And in my old age, I've become quite the craft stuff hoarder. 
Quite a lot of it has ended up at my school, but I have many things here at home, too. Sometimes I indulge the urge to make arty things.
I paint a picture or I craft or make little gifts or cards.
If I want to do those things, I have all the supplies I could ever need. If I need something, I can usually afford to purchase it.

The feelings of the teenage girl I used to be accompany me everywhere, even to work.

I like to have projects for the kids. 
It's my job, of course. 
But I love being able to provide the experiences for them. 
I like watching their discoveries and seeing the enjoyment they get from our activities.

Sometimes it's a craft or art, sometimes science experiments. 
Oh. Let's not forget the occasional trash day. This happens when I've saved up enough cereal box type cardboard, paper towel tubes, packaging materials. I bring out a cardboard box or two, full, and hand them masking tape. They make all sorts of interesting things. It always makes me smile when one of them asks when our next trash day will be. This year I plan to ask families to save specific types of trash so we can do trash day more often. We only did it twice last school year.

They like having something they can hold in their hand to show their parents at pick up. 
It generates so much excitement when they can't wait to show Mom or Dad what they made. Those interactions are the time for a kid/parent to reconnect and when it's a positive meeting, it sets the tone for the whole evening.

So yeah, I have a lot of reasons for providing some creative outlet for my young humans. It is a privilege to do the work I do.  

I'm not the boss, though. If I've given them supplies and a general idea of what they can or should not do with them and they ask if they can make something else, I say yes. 

For example, we occasionally get out the stamp pads and do fingerprint art. I have some Ed Emberley books, which I have cut up (I know, I know,  sacrilege). Each page is in a page protector. That way, I don't have 20 kids trying to use the same book. I keep the pages in a binder, and when we do that project, I get them out and put them on a table next to the activity. The kids can go to the table, pick out the one they'd like to make and take their page with them to the work table.

Once they get to know me, they don't even ask if they can make something different. 

They need to follow the basic rules, "Don't add water to the stamp pads, use the little condiment cup full of water to rinse your fingertip between colors, wipe it off on a paper towel. When your project is dry, here are pens to make the details."

But my rule for all of our projects is really a very simple statement.
"If you made something you like, you did it right."

So they find various things to use with the stamp pads. LEGO, pattern blocks, the edges of little toys. Whatever. It's water based color, so it washes.

I'm not trying to control their experience. It isn't mine to control. I won't tell them they're doing it wrong or try to change the outcome, although I've been known to fix little sequins or googly eyes that are sliding off the page because the child has used eleven tablespoons of glue.

So I was wandering around the internet last night and came across this gem from a former elementary art teacher. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The jellyfish problem” is a real example from my days in the classroom! 
It seemed harmless at the time, but by the end of class, those jellyfish tentacles had completely thrown off their compositions, they couldn’t practice the repetition techniques I was trying to teach, and worst of all - half the class was asking if THEY could draw something different too.
That’s when I realized → my job isn’t to make every student happy in the moment. It’s to give them the structured learning they need to actually grow as artists.
And most kids get genuinely excited when they understand there’s a real purpose behind the lesson!
It took me years to learn that consistency isn’t mean. It’s actually the most caring thing you can do for your students’ artistic development.
How do you handle students who want to switch things up?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It made me sad for the kids who were subjected to the attitude. It's amazing how fast kids can get to the point of not trying new things. Not looking at art supplies as something with infinite possibilities. I see that as a tragedy, not as a win for teaching.

I'm left remembering the Kindergarten teacher from years and years ago who told a small human who had the audacity to paint his cat pink, "We're not using our imaginations right now. We are painting."

They seem happy...

 

Well, yesterday was Wear Your Tie Dye Day.
Fridays are a low attendance day so not all my kids are pictured.
Funny how much alike they look, huh?

They were so proud of their shirts.

why the long faces?

There's an art wall in our school.
Different projects from different classes.


This one made me laugh.

There was no other possible title for this post.

Another Art Attack

Lyssa is working at a different school than mine.
The photos she sent are not from her program kids, but photos from the wall in the hallway.

So if you see names on them, they're not names from any of the children we take care of. I won't compromise child safety to amuse my blogfriends.

But I thought these Kindergarten-made gingerbread men needed a larger audience.
SO cute! Oh my gosh.

Artful

And in other news, they're still funny.

Yesterday the kids were pretending to be dogs.

They spent about 10 minutes discussing what *kind* of dog they wanted to be. Jason wanted to be a Husky, 'because they talk a lot' and Amina wanted to be a Basenji because 'so do they only they don't bark'.

Bailey listened to everyone else, and when it was her turn, she said, "I want to be one of those circle dogs that looks like a cheerleader pom pom."

There was some discussion and they finally figured out she meant she wanted to be a Pomeranian.

::snort:::

They're always funny. I'm so glad I get to listen in while they imagine and make up a whole new world.

I don't know which kid made this, but I overheard, "It's a love heart with the key."

Surprisingly, this is not Bailey's, although I'd
have expected it. This is from Brooke. She's barely six.
Apparently six isn't too young for indoctrination.
I did hear her asking kids at the art table how to spell Jesus, but I guess they didn't know.
Interesting how Jesues looks like a puppy wearing a sleep mask.

This is Bailey's artwork. She's going to be seven this month.

Olivia is five. Not bad for a five year old. I love the way she spelled my name.



None of these pictures made me laugh the way the sword did.
Do you remember the sword?
If you don't, you have to go see it.

do ittttttttt....