MamaStories

Amie is getting very excited about entering Kindergarten – she has an orientation on the 7th and school starts (only!) on the 10th. But she is also getting a little apprehensive. She remembers how she was comforted by a little seal doll during her first days at her preschool, and requested a new doll that  is small enough to take to school in her gigantic backpack. Thhaam obliged.

Some conversation during the project.

A: What’s that?

T: The navel.

A: The nipple?

T: No, not nipple. Navel. Belly-button.

A: And what is this?

T: Those are the buttocks.

A (smiling crazily): Yuck! Buttocks!

Oops: the hair was put on backwards!

T: Thank goodness you have two grandmothers who like stitching.

A: Oma likes stitching too?

T: Yes, she’s very good at stitching.

A: So if you die, then I’ll still have Oma… But what if you die at the same time, what will I do then?

Me: By then you’ll be able to stitch it yourself – for lack of a better answer.

Amie’s model for the face

T: She has a bit of a bald spot. Is that okay?

A: Yes, that’s what makes her so beautiful!

Meet Anya, the school doll.

A: Thhaam, this is the most beautifullest doll ever made!

Amie is at the moment in her tent, erected with sofa cushions and a sheet in our living room a couple of days ago. With the aid of a flashlight she reading aloud from an Usborne Farmyard Tales book. She has made strides reading. If she keeps it up, she’ll read fluently from, say, Henry and Mudge, in a couple of months. She is also getting better at addition and subtraction, and is “getting” the rudiments of multiplication. One of her favorite sayings these days is “seven plus seven is fourteen. That’s two times seven, you know?” She says this almost once a day. The “you know?” and “right?” are added for  emphasis, or rather coercion. They mean “don’t you disagree with me now!”

I must admit that we haven’t kept up the “bridge schedule” we had planned: 3 pages of  math (we use the average exercise book) and 3 pages of reading/writing (Explode the Code) a day. Our family life  this summer has been in a mess (in a fun way, mostly), and we’ve not been disciplined enough. Especially her writing has suffered, but I’m happy enough with the reading. She is realizing that to be able to read a book yourself is a real treasure and privilege. Now comes our task of finding good books for her.

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There has, of course, also been lots of art making. When Amie’s Dada (paternal grandfather) suggested that she become a doctor – a real doctor, not a Permanent Head Damage kind of doctor like her Mama and Baba – she immediately and vehemently protested that she was going to be an artist.

There was drawing from nature. With Thaam, the few sunflowers I managed to grow despite the squirrels and chipmunks:

The resulting drawing:

The butterfly we caught:

And Thaam (paternal grandmother) watching the fishes (love those kissy mouths):

And lots of drawing from imagination:

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and my favorite:

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Under the influence of her grandmother she has learned all the songs from The Sound of Music. I’ll try to capture her singing “Do a Deer” sometime and post it. It’s very cute, but after the fiftieth time I have ask her to sings something else.

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Amie turned five this August – we both blew out the candles because she was, of course, born on my birthday (it’s all hers now). We had a mega party (potluck). Though she was on the verge of angry tears for a moment, when I told her I had asked people not to bring presents, she bravely listened to the reasons and then agreed. Some people broke the rule anyway (grrr!), so she did get some presents, including the pottery wheel in the picture. It needed some Mama magic to make it work.

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The most important event was that magical two-week play date with her friend from New York City. One week they played and swam in Cape Cod, the next week they spent playing here at home. E. is a year and a half older than Amie and they get along so well. E at 6 is a fluent and voracious reader and that was a great model for Amie. They played intensely and when it didn’t work so well anymore they had no problem separating and finding a spot to be by themselves a bit.

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When you ask her “What will happen in September?” she’ll respond: “Pottery class with Lisa!” I enrolled her in a hand-built clay creations class with my teacher, Lisa Dolliver. Let’s see how much she will insist on working on the wheel -  wheel throwing only starts at age 11. She’ll be getting a break as it is, because the clay creations class only starts at Grade 1… Oh, and then there is, of course, also Kindergarten.

It’s been a while since I wrote about Amie’s art. This has become a garden (and beekeeping) blog, no doubt about it.  But while the blog has changed, in one respect Amie has not: she is still an artist.

Ever since a boy at her preschool claimed that she is not, she has been working hard at her art. She draws at least an hour a day, longer more often, depending what else the day has to offer. She goes nowhere without her field bag, bulging with paper and an array of pencils or markers. She is never happier than when I buy her a 20-pack of legal writing pads.

A couple of days ago, when we were drawing together, she was telling me that you have to practice long and hard. You have to be 90 to be an artist, it takes that long! I said few people live to be 90, really. Okay, she said, 70, no, 71 . That was as much as she wanted to compromise. I think it keeps her safe from expectations, her own especially. She gets quite upset when someone insists she already is an artist. She insists that she is really a “half artist”, not a “full” one.

Her art-making these days is more independent. Once in a while I sit with her to draw and then she’ll copy some things of mine that she finds interesting. Mostly she draws on her own. She doesn’t have a special place yet, and draws anywhere and everywhere: on the bus, in the car, in restaurants, at playdates, at the dining room table, at her desk, on the floor, on the bed… Sometimes she’ll come and sit next to me and quietly work away, or keep up a running comment. Other times she is happy quite by herself in the room.

These days she concentrates on patterns of shape and color. She loves to repeat and arrange random objects on a page. These are blankies and hats:

These objects are sometimes named, like “blankies” and “hats”, or they are simply “designs” or “decorations”. The strip and the two blocks in the drawing at the top are “pieces of candy” thrown up into the air for the bird to eat, but in the drawing below, they’re just “decorations”.

She likes to schematize objects too, oftentimes things that she feels are necessary in most pictures and that she has drawn often before, like the  grass in the drawing of Rabbit and Roo and the sky and the sun in the drawing of the playset (ladder, slide, swing):

She likes order on the page. Nothing touches, things are separated. In the drawing of Rabbit and Roo, they are holding hands. The drawing below, on the left, is of a dragon climbing a wall. And of the drawing of the  fishes she actually said: “See, these [the yellow dots] are separations.”

There are elaborate stories. Most of the drawings you see here are from a book she is making about a bird called Yellowfinch and his family – who are actually sparrows.  Here are two more drawings from the Yellowfinch series:

This schematizing, separating impulse is a new development, and the drawings you see above are all no more than a week old. The following drawing – my favorite – of a giant with a tiny head and belly button, which she made a month ago, already shows these inclinations:

Here is Amie about how she is an artist:

I did a quick hive inspection today. It was hot – at 10 am – and I had forgotten to tie my long hair back, thinking the hat might keep it back, but no… So I made it quick, and just pulled out the frames to check on the pattern of brood, honey, pollen, and drone cells, and to find the queen. The powdered sugar test for mites will have to wait till next time.

capped brood

these frames were really heavy

queen

(Thanks to DH for the pics!)

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I did the bee talk at my daughter’s preschool last week. The kids loved it. I came in all dressed up in veil and suit and gloves. I had brought one deep brood box with the undrawn frames in them, as well as the burr comb I pulled out earlier. My smoker was still smelly from going into the hive right before and stealing a drone, which I put into the old queen cage for them to see. They were so careful with him when they passed him around.

They had so many questions and, of course, stories about being stung, or not being stung. We talked about how to be safe around bees, and about how generous and hardworking they are. Fascinating, how the minds of 3, 4, and 5-year-olds work. Especially the boys were concerned about the fact that a colony is basically a sisterhood. “But then there’s no room for brothers!” said a little guy (a brother). I assured him that in the human world there is lots of room for brothers, but not so much in the bee world. They’re just different.

They, and I, had a great time playing a game that illustrates how bees use pheromones and scent to recognize each other. I had put one of 4 strong-smelling things (banana, garlic, oregano and tiger balm), 5 of each in old yogurt container (20 kids), then strapped a paper napkin over them so they couldn’t see what was inside (note to self: cloth next time!). They had to sniff their own scent and then buzz around to find the other members of their colony.

Lastly there was snack (very important!). Amie had designed a bee for the cookies and had helped cut some out. She was chosen to distribute the snack to the class. She was so proud. Of course she knew the answers to all the question I had for them, but she let the other kids answer first.

Amie’s favorite way to interact with the garden

art!

My favorite way

harvest!

(lettuce, spinach and mustard greens cleared from the Winter beds)

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.

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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.