Hearts and Stars

This year I decided to do my stars and hearts. But, after doing them for a couple of years, I was ready for a change.

This is a very shuttle change, and my first graders are still getting what I want out of this lesson, which is practicing line. I did choose to leave out the stamping part, but that would be easy to do in the background, maybe next year.  Below are some images from that lesson from a previous post.  

This lesson was featured here, on Deep Space Sparkle.

I do this often with my projects, making some simple changes can breathe new life into the project.  I can't just get out the same old projects year after year and blow the dust off.  This gets redundant and then we start to lose passion for what we do.  Plus, isn't that what we do, teach kids to try new things?  

If we aren't willing to experiment, why would they?  Plus, you can always go back to the way you originally did a project.

Happy New Year 2016

It has been a busy season. My oldest has been taking ballet for 8 years now, she is almost officially a teen. She has always been cast in some of the smaller roles in her dance companies production of the Nutcracker.

This year she was cast in 6 roles, and several proved to be very challenging. They have been rehearsing since late August, each Saturday, all day and some Friday night rehearsals. This on top of her regular ballet classes, 6 hours during the week. 

Little sis joined this year and made her debut as an angel and party girl. 

I saw her push herself, and I saw a range of emotions over the last few months. Of course the hardest to see were those tear filled afternoons where she was physically exhausted and felt she was letting others down. 

In the end, it came together, she and the other dancers did an amazing job (Yes, Mom cried). I saw them encourage one another, and swell with pride on a job well done, then collapse on the couch in shear exhaustion.

It is so great to see these young ladies, develop their artistic talents.  AND...interesting to see my own children explore their forms of art, my oldest in ballet, my middle is a tinkerer (the recycle bin is her favorite place to find treasures), and already my youngest is happiest when she has a notebook and colors!

It is shameful that the arts are not valued more in our schools.  Even my own high school alma mater has taken away their art program.  But of course, you should see the football field, brand new second gym, and new training facility.  Ugh...another conversation for another day.  

Hope you all have had a well deserved break!  Happy New Year to all.