MamaStories

Amie and I spent the whole day at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. They had special kids’ activities - crafting, a scavenger hunt, a Chinese lion dance demonstration - for the holiday week. We took our time, sauntering from one activity to the other, taking frequent snack breaks, only stopping at those art works that caught her eye.

Here Amie is sketching a ceramic horse. She was very careful about the knees - one of which had to be lengthened so the horse could “nibble at it” as in the original. I love the way she drew the saddle.

Here we plonked down in front of one of the Melendez still lives. We first looked at all of them and she chose the cauliflower. We discussed the painting, how one thing is in front of the other, but when she started drawing she started left to right, the metal flask first (notice the line of light), then the pewter bowl. Then she found she had too little room for the cauliflower, but that was okay since she doesn’t like cauliflower anyway. The large brown blotch on top is actually the background, which she says she’ll fill in “later” (not going to happen).

One of the tasks in the scavenger hunt was sketching this Babylonian lion with the help of a grid. That grid really threw her off.

In the same room we found the oldest art work in the museum: a vessel in the shape of a hare from neolithic times. She was intrigued by its age and insisted on drawing it and annotating the drawing. For its age, I asked to write 8 first, then add a 0, another one, and another one. “It is so old it is very delicate and you can’t reach through the glass to reach it” (sigh of relief from Mama here) “and because it is so old it is also very tired.”

We kept the Create a Creature with clay for last. I’m afraid Mama had to get her hands dirty as well: she had to make that turtle.

Amie has taken to writing me letters - she’s been watching My Neighbor Totoro, in which the oldest girl writes letters to her mother. I can’t come anywhere near her when she is writing. “Don’t look!” she says - not aware, perhaps, that I can hear her perfectly as she sounds out what she is spelling!

(Dear Mama I had an exciting day how are your days)

(Dear Mama I love you are you okay I am okay thank you for the message love Amie)

(Dear Mama I am at the airplane woops I am at the school had to hop off the airplane)

As you can see she is using invented spelling and I am letting her, though in my responses  I of course use the American English spelling, and I take the opportunity to discuss some words. In her first note, for instance, she wrote “deer Mama”. In the second and third one she had corrected it to “dear”.

What a treat this is! I stick the notes in my journal, and she keeps mine in a special box.

~

Today is the Valentine’s party at Amie’s preschool. We got the dreaded note on Monday: “Please have your child bring 20 Valentine’s cards to school on Friday.” So all of this week we worked on the cards, handmade entirely out of scrap paper. Last year I’d say I did 75% of the work, this year only about 30%.  Next year, I told her, she’d be responsible 100%. Amie also made cards for her teachers, and she wrote their names on the back: Meree (Mary), Soosin and Soosin, and Raylee. Of course I forgot to take a picture, just like last year.

Happy Valentine’s Party Day!

Galaxie Twelve by FreeCycle. Story by Amie. Typing by Mama. Will be published soon.

While in Belgium - rainy, gray, cold - we do a lot of drawing and painting. Here is one project:

Oma draws the outline (it tickles!)

Done

Work in progress

Finished

Amie made a heart for me this morning. Hearts within hearts, then she cut it out. As she was giving it to me she saw Baba also needed a surprise. After a couple of minutes she came running to him, with… a brain.

Amie has often expressed an interest in my journal - in the book itself (the journalist Moleskine) and in the process. I haven’t been writing in my journal regularly, but over this weekend revived my resolution to do so. This morning I pulled it and she asked if she could have a journal too, just like mine.

So…

Several hours later:

I told her what I write in my journal: what my day was like, what I wished my day had been like, what I plan to do, TO DO and other lists, all kinds of information, drawings and photographs, etc. And I showed her the baby journal I kept for her all too briefly.

I proposed she write it herself but if she gets tired of that, she can dictate and I will write it down (literally) for her. When she does choose to write it herself, I help her with the spelling whenever she asks, and if she proposes her own (phonological) spelling, I don’t argue.

I hope she will get as much joy out of journaling as I have over the years.

…

Over the weekend I attended a two-day Training for Transition - during which she was constantly on my mind. I learned so much, and am still exhausted, it was so intense. Will report on that soon (oh, add it to the list).

We’re all retreating into the living room around the warm fire. There’s so much to do in this contracted world.

• Art

Not a day goes by when Amie doesn’t work at her art. She’ll often pronounce “I am practicing because I want to be an artist.” She enjoyed discovering the technique of splashing by rubbing an old toothbrush over a net. She also likes our instruction book on how to draw basic animal figures (ours is an out-of-print Usborne). She was intrigued when I drew some circles and proposed she draw the basic emotions. She got them down right without my help, contorting her face to feel the shape of her mouth, her eyes and nose.

Lions, step by step, from How to Draw Animals

Trying the toothbrush and net splash technique, and the result:

Emotive faces

Girl on a bike, from a (paused) video

The last drawing was made from a tiny video still, and Amie became very frustrated with it because it wasn’t turning out exactly the way it looked on the screen. I explained that it was a very difficult subject - the word “subject” is now her favorite - and that the example was really too small. Still, she was nearly in tears, and I cursed myself for not gently leading her away from the project. l will be conscious of  this perfectionist streak in her and help her keep it under control. I know how it can ruin the fun! (Also read Lori’s helpful advice in the current Camp Creek Blog thread).

• Reading

Our 100-books-a-month table, with list

Amie is reading spontaneously now, here and there. Only last week she deciphered “Reese’s Buttercup” and “travel” and “cheese,” all of her own accord. Three-letter-words are read fluently, as well as certain sight words like “the” and “and”. Four-letter-words will soon be rolling off her tongue as well.

I know that at her preschool (Montessori) she uses cards and lists of words and all kinds of reading aids, but here at home she just reads books. She has mostly stopped trying to guess what the words could be by looking at the pictures - not all “first books” are clever in that regard! - but she’s good about using the context of the story and the sentence to speed up her reading. In our 100-book-a-month challenge we are aiming for 1 out of 4 to be read by her.

• Writing

Amie lists another title

Writing does not come as spontaneously as reading does, but she has gone from penning nonsense words and collections of letters to spelling out real words. When I suggest she write the title of a book we’ve read in our 100-books list, she readily grabs the pen and sets to the job. She will read the words and spell them out as she writes them down, or she’ll copy the letters of the more difficult ones and wonder aloud why some are spelled the way they are. What can I say, English is a funny language! For the latter though I’d rather she use invented spelling than mere copying, which becomes automatic and then she mindlessly forgets letters.

We are now starting to pay attention to her penmanship: the size of the letters (I draw lines) and whether she wants to use capitals or small letters. She still feels more comfortable with the capitals.

• Math

Doing algebra

Amie will happily spend half an hour on algebra exercises, but usually only with constant encouragement or if we sell it as “homework”. She’ll also do basic exercises on DH’s Ipod. She can solve:

5+8 - _

5+_=13

13-5=_

etc.

For anything under 5 and the addition or subtraction of 1 she no longer needs her fingers, doing them in her head - though sometimes it helps her to imagine cookies. She’ll still resort to her fingers, and her toes if need be, for the higher numbers, and we usually stay under 20. We don’t use flash cards but cheapo math books, because she likes to make that mark. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but she does like a sticker as lure and reward, and it helps if the math is presented as a game, like a maze.

After being slowed down for the so-manieth time when running out the door by having to collect all of Amie’s desired art materials, I decided to make a field bag, like the one on Camp Creek Blog. One of DH’s ruined khakis served just fine, and the sewing machine cooperated.

I just cut out a piece of a leg to the height we wanted (the largest sketchbook) plus extra for the seams. I turned it inside out, stitched the bottom together and seamed up the top all around. I cut a back pocket out of the pants and sewed that onto the front. Then I cut a narrow strip along the seam of the other leg for the shoulder strap, stitched along the other side, then turned it inside out, and sewed each end to the bag.

What’s in it?

Maybe I can make one for a girl whose sixth birthday party we’re invited to, to stuff with art materials like these. That would make a neat homemade Christmas present for kids and adults alike. I could embroider something special but simple on the front to make up for the messy seams. And I’m going to need one too. I like the second bag Lori made, which integrates the back and the side pockets: I’ll try that next!

My first attempt at making a costume or even a piece of clothing. Amie chose the fabrics for the cape and the skirt and patiently tried it on at several stages. I sewed it together on my machine, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, but mostly laughing. If there was a prize for the crookedest hem… But it all held together through much dancing, crawling and getting up and sitting down again.

The hat was going to be the trickiest part, as all our fabric was so flimsy. A friend, hearing of my predicament, gave us this hat (with hair attached) as a backup, in case the one I made failed to pass muster. DH however showed it  to Amie before I could even attempt it, and that was that.

I figure I’ll be fine with my one-stitch machine and improvisation skills as long as Amie wants to be a witch or (even easier) a ghost.  Anything beyond that, I’ll have to get some sewing lessons.

I also baked about 30 big cookies in the shape of pumpkins for the kids at Amie’s school to decorate. And Amie and DH carved the first of the big pumpkins, and we roasted the seeds.

Can you believe it’s that time of year again?

UPDATE: It’s over. I stayed home and some kids did brave our long and winding and dark driveway for our treats. Amie and DH went out together into the balmy and windy night, under the full moon playing hide and seek behind the clouds.  They were gone for abut two hours. Amie came home expressing her disappointment that she hadn’t managed to scare anyone. She has about 20 pieces of candy - she took one at each house - and she is so excited about them, but I know half of them won’t even get eaten. DH is putting her to bed at the moment. I can hear her constant chatter. It’ll be a long night.

It’s finally here, the book!

At the beginning of 2008 I got an email from Marjorie Wilson. She and her husband, Brent, are the authors of the seminal Teaching Children to Draw, published in 1982. Marjorie wrote that they were putting together the second edition. She was doing research on the net when she found the YouTube video of Amie drawing the three-headed person (here). From there on she made it to this blog, where she found “Drawing as it Develops,” my record of Amie’s drawing progress. She wondered if we would let her use Amie’s example in her new Introduction.

Of course!

We emailed, I sent her scans of Amie’s drawings, and we had a wonderful phone interview. Amie picture was chosen for the front cover, and her drawing of Tigger (this one) is printed, in color, on the back flap. The new Introduction tells the story of her drawing from age 1.5 to about 3 and how a lot of what she and we did corresponds with their findings and recommendations in the book. There are stills from the video and photographs of the resulting three-headed person, of Amie’s first scribbles, of DH carrying her in the backpack, and of this collaborative drawing in my journal.

Amie doesn’t quite understand - her first reaction looking at the still of the video was: “That’s not how you hold a pencil!” But she knows how happy and proud we all are.

And for me there could be no greater confirmation of the value of this blog. All those entries on Amie’s drawing are not only a record (that I would have failed to keep so orderly and punctually in my journal), but they are also of actual use to others, for their viewing pleasure as well as for information on how children draw.

So the book is finally out - Amazon says it will only be released in February 2010 but that seems to be a mistake. If you’re interested in childrens drawings, this is the book to get: full of insightful observations, great practical advice and lots and lots of fun examples. Brain food and eye candy. And our Amie, of course.

Now can you believe that I have been keeping this under my hat for over a year?!