Matzo Ball Soup!

My awesome friend D made the kids some matzo ball soup. We served it, and after finishing her bowl, R immediately went to the art table, grabbed her markers and pencils and a writing pad and drew this picture.

She told J tonight she is going to be a beautiful artist when she grows up.

Impressionism

When I picked R up from school yesterday the following display had been added to the large art room in the center of the school. They've been looking at Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" painting as well as numerous paintings of his and other sources of inspiration, and went forth and made their own creations. Here's a closer-up view of R's.

Self-Portrait

Done by R during her first couple weeks at school.

Bow Holder

Whenever R says she wants something, often our first reaction is to see if we can make it or something like it ourselves. R has really picked up on this, and will often try to make things herself on her own initiative. She knows where to find her scissors and how to open the secretary in our living room that has tape and other craft things in it.

One day we walked into her bedroom and found that she had made herself two new bow holders for all of her bows--they don't quite all fit on her bow holder that my mom's good friend JH made for her and that she loves to display from her vanity drawer handles (see bottom pic below). So she made her own!

 

Turkey vs. Monster

Scarecrow Craft

R and I made this scarecrow craft that I found on one of my favorite craft inspiration sites, The Crafty Crow. Everything on this scarecrow was decided by R except that I insisted that we had to fasten the arms and legs with paper fasteners rather than glue so that they would move--she wanted to glue them together. But I put my foot down on that one, especially after I made J go to Joann's specifically for these fasteners!

R wanted the scarecrow to have a dress, and she mandated for me what color paper I should use to help make the arms and hands (I did those, but only after she told me what to do). She picked everything else out, including cutting the stripes for the scarecrow's dress and gluing them on all by herself. 

Some holiday artwork from R

A Halloween scene she created with markers and several kinds of stickers

And a Thanksgiving letter she wrote to one of her pen pals. I'm especially proud of this because she asked me how to write "Happy Thanksgiving" and all I did was write the words on a separate piece of paper and she copied them. Then, after signing her name, I told her she could write anything else she wanted. She decided to add some hugs and kisses (xox) and then wrote "MOM" which is one of the few words she knows how to write without asking for help. She is really working on sounding out words and trying to spell them herself

"This Picture Has a Story"

R was sitting at her art table and found this picture she drew sometime last week. She pulled it out, looked at it intently, and announced, "Mommy, mommy, this picture has a story!"

"It does?! Will you tell it to me? Can I write it down?"

"Yes!"

She and I ran together to the art table. I picked up paper and crayon and proceeded to transcribe the following story, based on the picture above, which, yes, does have a grease stain on it.

Title: "Growing Flower Sun Goes Down"
By: R

Once upon a time a biiiiiiig blob came down and a flower grew. And little fishies showed up and saw the blob and the fishies kept swimming and looking. The flower grew higher and higher and higher. And the hill started to grow. And the sun came out. And the sun went down. The End.

R's Art Retrospective

For awhile now, I've been saving artworks of R's that I've been meaning to photograph and post on here. Only, I haven't been taking the pictures. I've just been storing them on top of a secretary dresser we have in our living room.

Of late though it was getting REALLY cluttered up there, and in my pre-Easter cleaning before Grammie and Grampy came over for Easter dinner, I decided to once and for all go ahead and get the stuff cleared off. So here are some photos of artwork R produced between January and March.

These are the valentines cards that Grampy helped R make for J and I. They came out SO GOOD!
Right around Valentine's Day, R's assistant teacher in her class at day care moved to a different classroom. A lot of us were really sad about this, so one of her classmates arranged a play date with several of the other kids from the day care class along with the assistant teacher just before she moved. At the play date the kids all painted photo frames, colored on the back of puzzle pieces taken from those cheap 25-cent puzzles you can get, and glued them to the picture frames. Her teacher then wrote "I Love You to Pieces!" on these Valentine's photos she'd taken in the classroom the week before and put them in the frames. I LOVED it, what a great crafty idea! The picture was proudly displayed on our piano for awhile but I've had to take it down and I'm honestly not sure where it's going to go now.Now, THIS--oh man, I was so proud of R for this picture. The two photographs below represent the front and back of the same piece of paper. The first picture (the front) represents dwarves on their ponies riding up the mountain (a definite The Hobbit reference, for those not in the know. It is one of R's favorite books; J has read it to her all the way through at least three times now).
And this second photo (the back) represents the mountain and all the secret doors the dwarves build and/or find (that part was not altogether clear to me). The doors are represented by the series of Ps, Rs, and Os drawn on the paper.This piece was drawn when R was just starting to get into drawing people and faces and I just thought it was really really good! It's a princess (of course) and a prince.
I laughed when she brought this one home from school in mid-March. It's Santa Claus and his bag of toys!
Over the winter term J taught an evening class from 6-10 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. On those evenings R missed him terribly. So we often wrote or drew things for him to pass the time. Here she's practiced her writing--she wanted to write him a letter and this is the entirety of the letter. She then added Toy Story stickers she received in her Christmas goody bag from one of her day care classmates.
and THIS, oh this remains one of my absolute favorite things R has ever drawn. The best pictures, in my mind, are those that are accompanied by vivid stories. This one was so good I tried to write down the story as R told it to us and explained what was in it.
The photograph below is my script of R's story of the picture, but I clearly missed a lot, since I only started scripting it on the third telling or so of what the picture was of. And since it's hard to read my handwriting, here's what it says:

"The princess is in the castle (the black-haired figure with the purple dress). The princess is looking out the window. There's a prince and a babysitter (in the lower right corner of the house). The bad guy is climbing up the steps but he's in a hole. (She had drawn the bad guy and then covered him with the black hole/cloud). That's the rainbow shed (said while pointing to the top of the page). This is a door. This is an open door. This is a not-locked door and this is a locked door." (Unfortunately I wrote this down sufficiently long ago that I no longer remember where all these doors are located in the picture).

Decorating for Spring

R and I made spring decorations the other day! I wanted to make flowers with tissue paper centers but R said she wanted to make butterflies. So I got all the materials for the tissue paper butterflies and then R decided she wanted to paint butterflies. I still wanted to do tissue paper butterflies, so I got those materials together and also broke out the paint for R. Here are our finished products. I think they came out pretty good, even if my photography skills are not so hot.

EDITED TO ADD: I forgot to mention that I was very impressed with R for suggesting that the pieces I cut out of the two butterfly wings filled with tissue paper could be Easter Eggs--and that she could decorate them however she liked with markers. What a great idea!

R wrote a book!

R Draws Her Cousins

R drew herself with her cousins the other day. Here she is with G. R is on the left, G is on the right.

  

Here she is with Little Frog. R is on the right this time, in pigtails, as she always likes to point out when showing people this picture.

Thanksgiving Crafts

Leading up to Thanksgiving--pretty much ever since Halloween--we've been talking with R about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and what it means to be thankful for things. One of my favorite things to do this month has been Thanksgiving crafts with R, not least because they've made absolutely perfect decorations for our kitchen windows.

Looking at our windows, you see R's Thankful Wreath right in the center. To make this, we traced her hand on construction paper and cut out about 15 or 20 of them. Then, on each hand we wrote something she was thankful for (click on the picture to enlarge it so you can read the hands). We then glued each hand to a paper plate with the middle cut out.

Immediately to the left of the wreath is a pair of turkeys R and I made--actually the very first Thanksgiving craft we did. We cut out big circles for the bodies (R drew hers, the blue one, and I drew mine, the orange one). Then I cut out feather shapes. She helped me sort them into piles of large and small feathers: large ones for my large turkey and small ones for her small turkey. Then she and I cut notches into our feathers and glued them to our turkey bodies. I cut out wattles, beaks, and feet and we glued those on too. She brought home some beads from day care that she wanted to put on her turkey, so we added those, too.

Then J helped R make the very large turkey to the right of her Thankful Wreath. We put some paint on a paper plate for her, let her mix it up with her hands, and then make handprints on construction paper. Then I cut out the handprints and R and J glued them to a paper plate, along with a turkey body. They drew on the turkey's neck and eyes, and glued on a beak, wattle, and feet.

And then in the bottom row, starting on the left, R drew a turkey for RUS on a painted paper plate; she decorated a turkey at school saying she was thankful for "my mommy," and she drew--totally on her own--at school, the turkey in the middle. Then we've got an assortment of Thanksgiving cards the kids received from Grandma and Grandpa and Grammie and Grampie.

Speaking of Thanksgiving cards, we had a LOT of fun making these! R and I colored on two pieces of white paper and then watercolor painted over the crayon markings. Then we traced her hand and cut out enough hands for all our cards, glued them onto orange construction paper, drew feet and glued on tiny beaks and wattles, and signed the backs. They came out so great!!!

Daddy's Girl

Recently R has been very attached to J. She's been having the best time with him, requesting that he be part of just about every activity she does. For about a week it was all J all the time, to the point that one morning when J wanted me to get up with her so he could snag 15 more minutes of sleep, she ran away from me screaming, and eventually ended up back in front of our bedroom door, pounding on it and yelling, "Daddy! I want Daddy!" Needless to say, because I couldn't get her to calm down, J ended up having to get up as well.

Anyway, she brought this home from school one day and both J and I thought it was super-sweet.

Some recent crafts and artwork

This is our art wall in the kitchen--the one new addition is the apple tree picture which I think adds just the right element to the wall. I can't wait until RUS's stuff starts getting added up there!

We love making holiday cards! Here's our art table filled with fun things to put on our Halloween cards, which we sent to the grandparents, great-grandparents, and cousins. R had a ton of fun with her stamp set and she absolutely went to town putting stickers on the cards.

A butterfly made by painting her feet and then stepping on a piece of paper, a sunflower made from a paper plate and gluing down sunflower seeds, and making prints with half an apple dipped in paint.

Her class does some of the cutest things relating to their themes of the week!

R 38 months

Dear R,

One of the biggest developments in the last few months has been your interest in artwork. There have been huge transformations in the kinds of things you create with your crayons and other art supplies, so I decided to feature some of my favorite things that you've done in this monthly letter.

I love the colors on this one. If I didn't already have my favorite beach landscape of yours taped to our kitchen wall I might've considered adding this one up there.
Another abstract skyscape. The purple mixed in makes me feel like this is a painting of the sky at dusk.
You drew this next one during your rainbow phase. If you can't read the writing on the picture, it says "Rainbow Alligator." There's another one on the other side, too.
And here is where everyone should start to be astounded. One of the changes that has occurred in the last few months has been that you've started coloring in the lines. You like to find random shapes and fill them in--like if you are coloring a picture in a coloring book you want to color in every shape you can find. If I draw shapes for you, you want to make marks on every single one. Depending on your mood, you'll either draw a single dot, scribble one or two little scribbles, color in the entire shape very heavily, or color EVERYTHING in and around that shape as if you want to obliterate it from the page. We were VERY impressed when you colored in this giraffe! I was particularly taken with your color choices.
But THEN, you colored in this toucan, looking at a picture of a toucan on the cover of one of RUS's board books. I absolutely love how well you colored in the bill in stripes of alternating colors! It's phenomenal!
And here you are proudly showing off your creation!You've been doing so much more than just artwork lately, too. Just this morning you did several somersaults entirely on your own. Previously we'd always had to help you along. You're having a great time with friends every day at day care, although your "best friend" changes daily. That's good, though--you want to have good friends and I don't think you need to tie yourself up with just one best friend yet.

Love,
Mama

Still Life With Fruits and Vegetables

A few Mother's Day photos

MOPSy

I joined a local MOPS group (Moms of Preschoolers) about a year ago. We meet two Fridays a month and I can't always go but when I am able to I really enjoy the activities and conversation. The last meeting we had I asked if I could bring R since her day care was closed that day for one of their professional development days. Normally it'd be a no-no because she wasn't signed up for the "Moppets" classroom, but it actually was an activity week and they said she might even have fun doing the craft with me.

So I asked R if she wanted to come to MOPS.

Of course she did. She then proceeded to tell me the entire story of Mopsy, Flopsy and Peter Cottontail, down to the details about their daddy getting caught and eaten by Mr. MacGregor.

She was really great at MOPS, too. The craft was decorating little canvas bags with fabric paint. I let her do it pretty much all by herself, aside from writing her name and-- at her request-- drawing a kitty cat in the corner. Here she is proudly displaying her new creation (in front of our azaleas!! They are so beautiful!)

Rainbows and Roses...

Lately, R has been drawing a lot of rainbows. By a lot, I mean A LOT. We have several piles of paper in R's drawing nook that look pretty much like the ones in the picture. She draws rainbows for us as gifts, and when Grammie and Grampie and Grandma and Grandpa were here she drew bunches of rainbows for them, too. I have to confess that some of the rainbows on the paper below got drawn by me and J, since we're often called on to help.