100 Years on the Yellow Brick Road

 Something cool happened last week- my great grandma turned 100 years old! (Did I ever tell you I'm going to live to be 102?) We are pretty proud of her around here. In addition to raising my grandma and 5 other children, who were likely just as much of a handful growing up as they are now, she has worked hard and led an interesting life. "Old Grandma" didn't get to finish school the first time around. She had to drop out to help her family. I know she wishes she could have finished because she once told me her dream job would be a high school English teacher. When she was in her 80's, I think, she earned her GED! Old Grandma is a crossword puzzle whiz. She always used to have one on the table when we would go visit. In the last couple of years, her eyesight has started to go which makes crossword puzzles understandably difficult, but she is still so sharp!

Another accomplishment is that she has been married to her younger man, Old Grandpa, for almost 75 years! They will celebrate their anniversary in May. Old Grandma was probably almost considered an "old maid" being unmarried at 25 years old in 1938. She met Old Grandpa and the rest is history. :)

Of course we had to throw a huge party. We had a reception for the community then family stayed after for a nice soup dinner. When you're a Dorothy from Kansas, it's easy to come up with a party theme. One of my cousins came up with "Dorothy's Rainbow Journey: 100 Years on the Yellow Brick Road". We had touches of the Wizard of Oz everywhere. a yellow brick carpet led guests into the room, paper yellow brick roads served as table runners, we had cupcakes for every color of the rainbow, and our family tree was of the grouchy, apple-throwing variety. Another cool feature was a decade table. We had signs for each decade along with props from or representing the era.

It was hard to come up with props for the 2010's, but we did have a really cool congratulatory letter from the first family!

Here's my husband and my little guy, who was enjoying a very blue cupcake. My cupcake contribution was lemon with lemon cream cheese frosting. Annnnd, now I'm hungry.

 We took tons of family pictures. I think there were 90+ family members in attendance. Above is the picture of my generation, the great grandkids. This picture cracks me up, especially the front row. Check out the little boy 3rd from the left. You can tell he's tired of pictures! And right next to him is another cousin turned around waving. Can you find me? Shouldn't be hard with the giant yellow arrow pointing at my head.

This was such a fun day! And yes, I know how very lucky I am to have the family I do. I still have all my grandparents and three great-grandparents. In addition, I've known 2 more great-grandparents in my lifetime. I'm so glad to know my great-grandparents and I hope that I'll be able to be as good an example as they have been.

Life- Family, Art, Grad School, Writing!

You may have noticed that I haven't posted as regularly the last couple of months. Now that my current graduate class- Art Education Research Methods- is basically finished, and I'm feeling better (more on that in a minute), I hope to get caught up on blogging! Here are some photos and tidbits you might enjoy from this fall.

Here's my little guy in his homemade Halloween costume. He's supposed to be the lizard (Liz) from the Magic Schoolbus and I was Miss Frizzle if she subbed for Art class. While he looks pretty darn cute and I did a decent job for winging it and making my own pattern, nobody knew who/what we were! Most thought he was a dragon, which is pretty cool, too. Everybody thought I was just going as an Art teacher. :)

Here's our big announcement! We are having another baby, due at the beginning of June. My just turned 2 year old is getting even more into Art so he made a painting to announce the news to family and friends. And the pregnancy is the biggest reason I've been slacking a little. I honestly don't remember being this tired when I was pregnant the first time, but this time has just been a lot different so I shouldn't be surprised. I usually do homework and blog after my little guy's bedtime but I was so exhausted that I would fall asleep reading my textbook and most nights ended up in bed shortly after he did. I'm finally feeling better and have a little more energy. I'm enrolled in another graduate course January-April then I will take Summer and Fall 2013 off to adjust to being a mom of two. :)

One of the best things as an Art teacher mom is seeing the milestones that some people might not realize are milestones! I'm so glad that my son is into Art. He's been painting for a long time- usually I let him choose a couple paint colors and a piece of cardstock and he goes to town. No finger painting around here, he wants to use a brush like Mommy. A couple years before he was born, I bought a kiddie easel marked down to $12.50 after Christmas. One side has a chalkboard, the other a dry erase board, and there is a big roll of paper at the top. This weekend was the first time I had ever unrolled some big paper for him to draw on and he loved it. I was watching him draw and taking a little iPhone video, when he turned and said "Look! Bat, ball!" I was so excited! He is obviously still in the scribble stage which is perfect for 2, but he named something in his painting! Milestone! Later he pointed to the black line toward the bottom and told me again, "bat!"

The last thing I wanted to share with you tonight is that I had an article published in the December issue of Arts & Activities! It was a quiet goal of mine to submit something to Arts & Activities or SchoolArts but I could never decide what to submit. When you're asked to submit a specific idea, it makes it a lot easier! Writing the article wasn't as intimidating as I had built it up to be, not much different than writing a blog post though I tried not to ramble as much. It definitely made me want to submit more articles in the future. If you don't subscribe to Arts & Activities, you can read the article online here: http://pubdev.ipaperus.com/ArtsandActivities/AADecember2012/?page=24

If it starts you at the beginning, just click through to page 25.

Kindergarten- Home and Family Paintings

Today is Grant Wood's birthday and his painting, American Gothic from 1930 was the inspiration for this lesson.

American Gothic. [Online image] Available http://www.artic.edu/artaccess/AA_Modern/pages/MOD_5.shtml#

Day 1: I asked the students to raise their hands if they have ever seen the painting before.  Next, I called on students to describe the painting (at this level, name things they see in the picture.)  I ask the students who they think the people are and what their relationship is.  (Do you think they are friends or family?  Husband/wife, brother/sister, father/daughter?)  After the students have shared their ideas, I told them about Grant Wood and the painting.

Background info on the painting: Grant Wood was born in Iowa in 1891.  Wood grew up on his family’s farm where his interest in art developed.  Wood began selling paintings in high school to make money for art supplies and attended the Handicraft Guild art school in Minneapolis and the Art Institute of Chicago after graduating.  He joined the army as a camouflage painter and afterwards traveled to Europe to study art.  Grant Wood said “I realized that all the really good ideas I’d ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.  So I went back to Iowa.”  Returning to Iowa was very important in Wood’s career.  He decided to paint the landscapes and the people he was most familiar with.  This made Wood part of a movement known as Regionalism that some consider the first uniquely American art style. The story behind the painting is that Wood was traveling through Eldon, Iowa when he saw a farmhouse with an unusual window.  He had a photograph made of the house so that he could work on the painting in his studio.  Wood’s sister, Nan, and his dentist posed for the painting as a farmer and his daughter.

I wanted this project to be about home and family instead of parodies.  Basically, the painting is a picture of a family in front of their home!  After the Art History lesson, ask students the "big questions":

-What is a family? (Ask what IS instead of what MAKES unless you want to hear about having babies...)  Are all families the same?  Art pets part of the family?

            -What makes a house a home?  What are some different kinds of homes?

Then I told the students that their assignment would be to make a picture of their family in front of their home.  At this stage, I gave the students 9x12 inch white paper and pencils.  I reminded the students not to color anything in with pencil because we would be painting in the next class.

Day 2: Pass out drawings, go over paint brush care, painting procedures, roll up sleeves and remind the students to be VERY careful!  (I need to acquire some paint shirts!)  I wanted to show the Young Sloppy Brush video but I can't seem to find it online ANYWHERE.  It must have been taken off of all the websites for some reason.  I used tempera cakes and gave the students the smallest paint brushes I had in the classroom to encourage detail work and to make sure they took longer than 2 minutes to paint.  Most of the students used the entire class period to paint.  A few finished early and were given free draw paper.  I have back to back classes and obviously that doesn't leave any time to switch out supplies in between.  When my second class came in, I had them sit on the line made from red duct tape (the farmer's almanac told me that either "duct" or "duck" is correct!) where they line up at the end of class while I switched out water and reviewed the Art History lesson from Day 1.

Day 3: I showed the students how to use a marker (either sharpie or black felt tip pen) to trace back over their initial drawn lines and bring out the details of the picture.  Markers were the finishing touch and it worked really well for students who missed the class we painted.  I didn't think it would work to get out paint just for a student or two who had been absent so I had them trace their pencil lines and use crayon to color in their pictures.

Here are some of my student examples.  We all really enjoyed this project, and I'm guessing that their families will appreciate the results!

(One of my Pre-K students that comes with Kindergarten to art.)