i let mikey and allie choose what class they wanted to do this winter. i thought maybe dance again for allie and some kind of sport for mikey. but they ended up both choosing an art class. i readily agreed since they both could be in the same class which meant i’d only have to get them to one class once a week. i’m all over that option any day.
though it also meant that lauren and i had to hang out on one side of the room for an hour while mikey and allie happily painted and cut and glued. though unfortunately for me, lauren wasn’t quite happy just sitting with me and wanted to do what her siblings were doing. since she’s a big girl now, after all. except that you have to be three to five years old to be in that class. she just couldn’t understand why i wouldn’t let her go no matter how many times she howled about it. oh, the injustice! so each week, i had to bring along quite a few snacks to keep her occupied and distracted during the class. and when those ran out, we had to scoot outside and walk around to further distract her from the injustice of being seventeen months too young.
all this to say that most weeks, i wasn’t able to really watch what allie and mikey were doing and see them creating their little works of art. until last week. it worked out that phil was post-call that day and agreed to keep lauren at home. so i finally got a chance to see them in action. with my camera, of course.
for the first half of the class, the kids are free to choose between three
tables set up with different activities, or they can go paint at the easels.
allie chose to start with some chalk drawing.
“hmm, what to draw… what to draw…”
mikey took a little longer to decide what to do.
but eventually decided to give this string painting a try.
allie wanted to try it too. i found it interesting that mikey made all
straight lines with his string while allie took a more abstract approach.
before long though, they made it over to the easels,
which is both their favorite activity in art class.
“look mommy! i made purple!”
intently focused.
“hey mommy, what are you doing up there?”
mikey’s masterpiece. (he asked me to take a picture of it).
mikey’s second masterpiece.
when allie’s sleepy or deep in concentration, she kinda
sucks on the inside of her lip. she’s done this since she
was a baby and you can kind of see her doing that here.
i love when she does that.
she woulda stayed here and painted all day if she could. she loves it.
but soon it was story time! allie’s hand shot up when the teacher asked if they liked to draw.
the focus this week was on drawing using a variety of different colored pencils,
markers, crayons, and oil pastels. allie started off with her trademark happy face
with two pigtails. in what else but pink. 🙂
soon though she said it was her jumping on her bed. mikey asked where he was.
so she drew the bunk bed above her with mikey (in blue) at the top.
mikey preferred to try out the different tools in scribbles.
and wanted to be done in thirty seconds.
so that he could have time to go to the play dough table before class ended.
allie enjoys this table, too.
check out those little fingers working hard to squeeeeeze out the noodles.
and that, my friends, is a typical day in art class with mikey and allie. when i’m not stuffing cheerios into lauren’s mouth or trying to keep her away from the fun kid tables or keeping her busy outside. it was quite enjoyable spending a little time with the older two and getting to hear their thoughts while they painted and drew and played with dough. fun stuff.
2 Comments
Jenny
what a fun class michelle. i always wanted to put Austin into an art class but never got the chance. maybe with bethany?
joyceandnorm
makes me want to take an art class. very fun! i like the string painting. i like the pigtails that allie draws.