Books and Highlights

I know I haven't been posting every week like I said I would.  I haven't been keeping up with weekly themes due to "summer vacation."  Both my kids don't know what that is, but I am pretending they do.  We've been sleeping in later, and not really doing a lot of learning.  Been going outside a lot and doing water play, movies, and playtime inside.  We have kept up with some of the story times we found during this pandemic.  PBS kids has a wonderful story time every week.  This week we did two.  The most recent was by Dwyane Wade.  The book is called "Welcome to the Party" by his wife Gabrielle Union.  Such a sweet book, written to welcome their little girl to the world.  The illustrations are so wonderful, they're by Ashely Evans.  The next one was "Purplicious" by Victoria Kann and Elizabeth Kann.  Book about bullying and finding friends who like you for you.  

My kids are very lucky to have grandparents that get them the little extras in life.  I feel so guilty for it most of the time, but I appreciate it.  One of those little extras is getting Highlights, the magazine.  I used to love reading it at the dentist.  Doing the hidden picture page.  But my kids have them for their own.  This month there was a fun craft to make, sparklers!  Perfect for right before the 4th of July!  I found out that it was probably for the more advanced reader to do with their parents.  It was kind of hard for me to do!  They helped gathering the supplies and smoothed down the tape for me.  

They came out alright, but not as good as the crafty people from Highlights, that's for sure!  My kids are having fun with them and we can use the extra supplies to make other sparklers for every day use.  

The other thing we did this week was make brownies.  Just a Betty Crocker box, but I feel like box brownies are the only way to go.  I always remember homemade brownies never coming out right.  I gave each of my kids turns at putting ingredients in the bowl and they had turns stirring with the wooden spoon.  They helped me grease the pan.  And always the best part, licking the spatula and or spoon!  Baking is always a good time, and always a nice treat for dessert for lunchtime after they've cooled.  

They love wearing their aprons!

Their grandparents also bought them a book from a suggestion on the PBS Newshour this past week.  It's from the Newshour's Canvas series.  Jeffrey Brown talks to writer Jason Reynolds about his picks for summer reading.  One he suggests for little kids, my kids age group, is "Honey, I Love" by Eloise Greenfield.  The illustrations are so beautiful, they're by Diane and Leo Dillon.  When I got the book in the mail, I was so happy to see the Reading Rainbow logo on the front of the book.  That was one of my favorite shows growing up.  I tried to get my daughter into it, but no such luck.  I might try again now that she's a little older.  She loves reading and being read to, so I think it's right up her alley.  Here are some of the books I got in the mail this week.  So happy to add them to our book collection. 

Both books are illustrated by Christian Robinson, but "Last Stop on Market Street" is written by Matt de la Pena.  Such great stories.  They help me show my kids how I want them to be, good humans.  "Last Stop on Market Street" talks about finding the good even when it seems there isn't any around.  Also about being kind and giving to all of those around you.  "You Matter" talks about how no matter who you are, how you are, what you are...you matter.  These books reassure me that there are still good people in the world and that I want to be apart of that kind, selfless, choosing love world.  I hope that I can teach my kids to be that way too.  

Hope you all had a good week.  Hope you all have a great 4th of July weekend and are able to safely spend time with family and friends.  Until next time...

Kangaroos

This week my daughter wanted to learn about kangaroos.  So that's what we did.  We had an idea of a project we wanted to do and shows we would watch to incorporate our theme.  The weather was really nice this week so we got a lot of outside time. Even lunch outside a few days! My son was pumped we were able to get the water table out and use it more than once!  

Monday we read a few books on Epic! and watched a Wild Kratts episode and a Curious George episode.  We read "Over in Australia" by Marianne Berkes and illustrated by Jill Dubin.  If any of you know the song "Over in the Meadow," you can sing this book is to that tune.  It had a lot of great info at the end of all the different animals that live in Australia.  My daughter LOVED this, we read/sung it twice.  We also read "My First Animal Library: Kangaroos" by Mari Schuh.  We were hoping to find out in this book how far a kangaroo can jump, but it wasn't included in the info in this book.  Epic! also had a National Geographic Kids video on the Eastern Gray Kangaroo.  The Wild Kratts episode we watched is called "Kickin' it with the Roos" from season 1 episode 19.  The Curious George episode we watched is called "Monkey Down Under/Bright Lights, Little Monkey" from season 7 episode 1.  We watch Wild Kratts on Amazon Prime and Curious George on Hulu.  We also watched The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh on Disney+.  We watched the "Party Poohper/The old SwitcheRoo" episode from season 1 episode 22.  

Tuesday we watched the Read Along with Michelle Obama on our PBS Kids YouTube subscription. Mrs. Obama read "Oh the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss and "Can I be Your Dog" by Troy Cummings.  I appreciate that she read "Oh the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss, but I'm not really a fan of that one.  I get it, it's graduation season... I always hated that it was always the speech that was given at graduations.  That's just my opinion though.  I still have the copy that was given to me for my high school graduation from a family member.  My kids spaced out during this one or played elsewhere in the house.  They listened a little bit more to the second book.  That was a really cute story about pet adoption.  And Mrs. Obama's special guest was her two dogs!!!  So fun!  

Wednesday we did Laurie Berkner's #berknerbreak on her Facebook page.  Today's theme was Colors!  I need to remember to get my kids to grab instruments before Ms. Laurie begins.  Both of them scrambled to pick something quick for the hello song she does.  They were ready.  My son picked the Fisher Price piano and my daughter picked her microphone.  They had a lot of fun this week with her show.  We knew a song she played today, "Little Red Caboose."  That makes it more fun for my kids when they know the songs.

Thursday we ventured out to Target.  I try to recycle the store-drop-off plastics.  Since the lock-down started I've accumulated two big shopping bags full of said plastics.  We also had a return to bring in that I had before the lock-down.  We were able to do the return, no problems.  They had the recycling bins covered and had a sign that they weren't doing customer recycling at this time.  Bummer... I'll have to check at other stores if they're accepting store-drop-off plastics.  After that we went through the car wash, always a good time.  

Friday we did the Metropolitan Museum of Art's story time or Storytime with the Met. Again, the kiddos had a hard time focusing.  But they sat in the same room and hopefully listened to the story even if they weren't paying attention to the TV screen.  They did "Sparky" by Jenny Offill.  We own this book, which might be the only reason my kids stayed in the room with me.  At the end the staff member shows their selection of artwork that goes along with the story they chose.  "Sparky" is about a sloth and the staff member chose a print.  It had animals, including a sloth, dressed in human clothes in a scene.  So great that they show kids artworks from the museum to go along with the story they read.  I really enjoyed it even if my kids were having a hard time focusing.  

We had been so busy with other things we never got to our kangaroo project until Friday.  We found out that Kangaroos can jump up to 25 feet!  So we decided we would use our measuring tapes and mark on our hall floor how far 25 feet was. With a piece of tape we made a starting line. We measured from there where the 25 feet was.  Then we took turns jumping and marking our jumps with tape with our names on them.  Then we measured how far we all jumped and compared them to the kangaroo jump.  Boy did we fall short!  A kangaroo jump is pretty impressive when you see it compared to your three foot jump.  

Hope you all had a good week.  Hope you come back next week to see what we've been up to.  Thanks for reading! 

Art and Storytimes...

This week was a mixed bag, but we rolled with it.  Started the week off okay.  I think trying to force education on my two year old didn't work so well.  We've had to adjust for his level of learning. Monday we did painting.  I had my Seurat book, Magritte book, and my Modern Art book from college out for them to look through.  That didn't happen, however.  My daughter and I read a few books on Epic! that were really great.  We read "My Dog Thinks I'm a Genius" by Harriet Ziefert and "The Little Paintbrush" by Bjorn F. Rorvik and illustrated by Thor Hansen.  

I had some Crayola paints, two 9"x12" canvas boards, paint brushes, q-tips, sponges, and FINGERS to use to paint a beautiful painting!

Their finished products.  My son had more fun squeezing the water out of his sponge than anything. 

Tuesday we did Read Along with Michelle Obama on PBS Kids for the first time.  We found the video on their YouTube channel.  It was so great!  We'll definitely be doing this every week.  Mrs. Obama had a special guest for the second story too, President Obama!  The first book was "Giraffe Problems" by Jory John and illustrated by Lane Smith (one of my favorite illustrators).  The second book was "The Bear Ate Your Sandwich" by Julia Sarcone-Roach.  Both really fun books.  

My daughter and I made a road of Play-doh.  All of her characters and animals were finding a new home.

Wednesday we did another online event with Laurie Berkner.  She uses the hashtag #berknerbreak. We used her Facebook page, but I think it's live on her Instagram and might be on her YouTube channel too.  It's at 10am.  It's a half hour program and she has a theme every day.  She does it Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  The theme was HELPING.  She had a brightly colored banner behind her so she could spell the word with the kids.  There were a lot of shout outs to people watching her Facebook live feed.  She sang a few songs and were easy to pick up if you didn't know them, like us!  I think the kids would've liked her Friday show better.  It was dinosaur themed and my kids both know the "We are the Dinosaurs" song. 

We didn't do as much as I hoped on my theme of the week, but like most people these days, I'm learning.  I am realizing now that I have to do two different things for my kids.  And that's okay, when I accepted that on Monday I noticed things were much better.  I wasn't so frustrated and the days went more smoothly.  Hope you all had a good week.  Check back next week to see what we were up to. Thanks for reading!

Baking Week

It was suggested to me by a friend to start a blog about my projects with my kids during the covid-19 pandemic.  Thought I'd start this up again and see how it goes.  I try to watch PBS News Hour every day to stay up to date with everything going on.  I really feel for parents during all of this.  Especially parents with kids with special needs.  Our teachers are SO important in our society.  It really does take a certain type of person to be an educator, in my opinion.  And some parents are not, and that's okay!  That's why we have schools!  Or at least we did...  It will be interesting to see what happens this fall with our education system.  With my eldest going into kindergarten.  I'm nervous and curious to see what they do about the classroom this coming fall.  

So in absence of school and libraries for my kids we do things at home that I have picked up from what my daughter did at her preschool and what they do at story time at our library.  I pick a theme over the weekend to do throughout the week.  My daughter had school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  So I tend to do writing and that type of things with her on those days to keep that up.  (Which the past two or three weeks I've definitely slacked on that one!)  I try to do an art craft at least once during the week.  I try to read books on the theme at least on MWF.  I kind of slack off a bit on Tuesday and Thursday to give them a break.  I know it's not the best policy to do, but we incorporate TV and/or movies with our theme of the week.  Because I still have to get the dishes and laundry done... And my son won't leave me alone if he's not occupied by a screen.  Even then he sometimes gets bored and finds me.  Outside time is put in in our mornings as well on the nice days.  That usually takes up at least an hour of our morning.  

So back to BAKING WEEK!  I really only did it Friday, I'll be honest.  So we started with Blippi.  My son LOVES Blippi, and my daughter too.  My daughter likes a lot of different things right now, but Blippi is at the top of my son's list of things to watch.  He has a video on visiting a bakery and he goes behind the scenes and makes things at the bakery.  

We haven't baked in a while at our house so we made soft ginger cookies Friday too.  If you make it from the link, it's a double batch from what's in their cookbook I have.  And we alter the spices at our house too.  Definitely recommend them, they're my husband and my favorites!

We read "In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak the other day.  I should have read "The Little Red Hen" with them.  I love that Golden Book.  Verizon sent links with free service to a few educational site until June 22nd in an email.  I took part in the Epic! site.  My daughter LOVES it!  They have a reading buddy feature.  They read books for 20 minutes and they get to feed their pet a snack.  They have a great selection of non-fiction books that we really liked to get at the library when we lived in Columbus, OH.  They have a fair amount here in Muncie, IN, but not as much as they did in Columbus.  So today we read two books on that website about baking.  Really cute books.  "Save the Cake" by Molly Coxe and "Grandma's Kitchen" by Madison Lodi.  "Save the Cake" is felted and fabric animals photographed for the illustrations.  "Grandma's Kitchen" is illustrated by Francesca De Luca and I really like her style.  

Thursday we made a three tiered cake out of construction paper, buttons, ribbon, cardboard, and stickers.  We practice using markers, colored pencils, crayons, and gluing.  I didn't end up having them cut with scissors today.  I cut out the shapes to save time of the cake layers.  They helped me glue them together.  My daughter glued lots of buttons on herself.  I don't know if anyone remembers the song "not a river, not a lake, not a puddle, not a stream" from elementary school about glue.  I taught it to my daughter.  She puts so much glue on the back of buttons and apologizes so much for it because I taught her the song!  Haha!  She keeps doing it though, haha.  

Before lunchtime we turned on Sleeping Beauty so I could finish baking the cookies.  Why Sleeping Beauty you ask?  For the cake baking part of course!  Love the mess they make trying to make Briar Rose's birthday special without their magic, such a fun scene.  We made it to lunchtime with out too much of a crying issue with both kids!  What a day/week.  I've been struggling with feeling exhaustion.  Haven't felt that way in months.  I haven't been very motivated to stay on track with keeping the kids engaged in something other than TV lately.  It's been bad for three weeks now.  I think I'll be better this coming week.  I have a plan!  Check back in the coming week to see what we do.  Thanks for reading!

Weekly Inspiration No. 4

Well that didn't take long for me to fall off the wagon, eh?  So it's almost been a month since I updated my blog posts.  Sorry for the delay.  This one's going to be kind of short.  I didn't really delve into this artist too much so I apologize.  I chose Alex Ross weeks ago.  When I picked him I asked Kevin if he'd heard of him.  Alex Ross is a very well known artist in the comic book and graphic novel community.  Kevin immediately said yes.  One of his favorite graphic novels is Astro City: Confession.  I need to go through Kevin's collection of graphic novels one day.  He has a pretty big collection.  But getting back to Alex Ross...  In what I've read about him, he works in watercolors mostly.  Meaning he's a painter first and foremost.  He usually does covers and a lot of character design for story lines because that watercolor being the medium he works in, it takes forever.  Could you imagine doing an entire comic book with only watercolors.  It would take a wicked long time.  He is the best in the business though as far as reputation goes.  I found it interesting he went to the same art school as his mother, the American Academy of Art in Chicago.  Here are some of my favorites that I found that Alex Ross has painted/designed.

Marvels Painted 6

Astro City cover #5

Superman #676 cover

Batman Black and White p.3

Batman Painted 3

The Shadow #12

Weekly Inspiration No. 3

This week I looked at my usual go to for artists, artcyclopedia.com, and ended up on the instillation artist page.  There was a decently long list of artists to choose from dating back to an artist born in 1917.  I started by going past names that I knew like Rebecca Horn and Annette Messager.  I looked a few artists I thought I recognized and wasn't really impressed by the work that I saw.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that these artists aren't good at what they do.  I just wasn't really "inspired" I guess is what I'm trying to say.  I then decided I would look at all the American artists on this list.  I kept going until I found Zoe Leonard.  She was born in New York and still works and lives in the state.  I'm not going to go into as much detail probably as the other two artists I've researched so far.  I didn't really delve into her work until today.  I'm not going to lie, I definitely put this week's blog off until last minute.  Nothing seemed to grab me, but she's the one that kept me interested enough to look at more of her work so here we are.

"1961", 2002-ongoing

This was the installation that initially caught my attention and made me want to see more of her work.  This piece, Leonard adds a vintage suit case for every year she's alive.  It's interesting to me that she used suit cases to represent a year of her life.  I wonder what the significance is.  Did she travel a lot in her childhood?  Were her parents in the military and that's why she traveled so much.  Does she just like vintage suit cases?  Why mostly blue vintage cases?

I then found an interview with Leonard.  Here she explained her process.  As an artist, as you will see in the next pictures I post, who works with photography a lot she wants her viewers to see things how she sees them.  They'll obviously make their own interpretation of her work, but that's part of the process.  The next installation I saw is called "Strange Fruit (For David)."  This also caught my attention because in the text surrounding this piece Billie Holiday came up.  She had a song with the same name.  This piece was done around a time when Leonard was big in the AIDS awareness movement.  She sewed zippers and used yarn and string and buttons to dried fruit skins.  From what I gathered it was for a friend who died of AIDS.

"Strange Fruit (for David)," 1992-1997

"Strange Fruit (for David)" detail, 1992-1997

There is another installation she did that interested me as well.   This installation is of dolls that Leonard found at yard sales and thrift stores over a period of time.  It seems from the things I've read that she found it interesting that all of them were just discarded.  And that she thought of the dolls' story: where they came from, who played with them, and why they were given away or discarded.  

"Mouth Open, Teeth Showing," 2000.

Another thing she talked about in the interview I read was that she took pictures at this medical museum in Paris.  There was a bearded lady in a Ball jar.  It doesn't seem to be a Ball jar in the photograph she took, but that's what she said a few times in the interview.  Leonard said that this "specimen" was just in a back room on top of a filing cabinet or something.  Just an afterthought it seemed.  It fascinated her that this poor woman's head was just discarded like that.  And so many questions: were her family compensated, was her body buried, where did she come from?  I guess she worked for a circus, but still, it's so creepy that they preserved her head for science? 

"Preserved Head of a Bearded Woman, Musee Orfilia," 1991.

One of the photo installations I really enjoy in its entirety is "Analogue."  This is a compilation of 412 photographs she took with a Rolleiflex camera.  She took pictures from 1998-2009 of neighborhoods in New York City.  There are a lot of store fronts and street cart vendors.  It's neat to see the changes in the storefronts over the years.  

"Analogue," 1998-2009.

This is what the installation looks like in a museum.

"Analogue," 1998-2009.

I hope you enjoyed looking at some of the work by Zoe Leonard.  I'll leave you with one of her more recent installations.  I definitely relate to this artist.  Through my artwork, especially my photography, I want the viewer to see things the way I do.  They might not view it in the same way that I do, but that's the interesting part about hearing what people think of your artwork.  They see things, sometimes, in a completely different way than I do.  Leonard's view of the world changes in medium as well which I relate to as well.  She might feel that a physical found object is the way to show how she's feeling about a subject, or maybe it's a photograph, or a group of photographs.  And the subject matter is all over the place too.  Which is interesting to me.  She has different feelings at different points in her life and she's sharing that with the world.  We get to see into her diary so to speak.  She's putting herself out there for the world to see.  That's brave, to me.  To put all your thoughts and emotions out in the open, very courageous.

Weekly inspiration No. 2

I'm a bit late this week, but I'll get into a better routine eventually.  This past week I looked into the artist Chris Gilmour.  I was going to do Wassily Kandinsky, but I thought that might get a bit boring.  I was going to piggy back artists that were friends or inspirations of the artist I did the previous week.  But I decided to go a different route.  At first I thought I'd share my favorite artists, but that wasn't really the goal of this project.  It was to learn about new artists and the need to be inspired artistically again.

Strongbox, 2006

I'll start with probably my favorite that I've seen of his work.  As you can see, his medium is cardboard.  He uses cardboard and glue.  This is one of his later works and you can kind of tell if you look at the right side and on the pieces on the open door that you can still see the print on the original cardboard.  There's an interview on his website where he said that he started out by using cardboard in it's purist form.  Meaning he would use pieces that didn't have tape, print, or labels on it.  But in his later work he enjoys seeing the cardboard for what it is.  People discard it everyday and he wanted to use it in a way that everyone knows it, even it's more unappealing sides.  I enjoy that he changed his perspective in that way.

Aston Martin, 2006

This is another piece I enjoy.  It's life size and he did all the interior and the inner workings of the engine as well.  I read that a lot of people who viewed this work wanted to get inside and try everything on the car.  It's incredibly detailed.  He also did a Fiat car too that was life size, and detailed as well.  I think it's so cool he wanted to recreate these cars to the "t."  Seems like he did a lot of research and sketches to make these come to life.  That is something I don't tend to do.  If I'm making something, painting, or drawing something I tend to just go and enjoy the mistakes and layers that end up happening.

The Triumph of Good and Evil, 2010

It's crazy to me that he does everything out of cardboard and glue.  Everything is so detailed.  He has done a few statues like this.  I mean he's done a few busts a few human formed statues as well.  This one is my favorite of his human figures.  It's so fantastical and it looks huge!  I'd love to see his work in person.  Just to see all the detail of his work.  The dragon is so cool looking.

Chris Gilmour grew up in the UK and now lives and works in Italy.  He has a wikipedia page if you'd like to read more on him there.  His biography on his website and the wikipedia page are pretty similar.  I didn't find too much on him, but I was really glad to learn about him.  When I was thinking of an artists to do this past week, I wanted to find the grad student that was student teaching with one of my professors in art school.  I think it was my second year of art school.  He like to work with cardboard as well.  He showed us his portfolio one day in class and told us about why he liked to work with cardboard.  I couldn't remember his name and he wasn't listed in a Google search, that I could tell anyway.  From my memory he liked to do sculptures of everyday scenes, like a kitchen or something along those lines.  I was bummed I didn't find him, so I settled on Gilmour instead.  

I'll leave you with this last piece and what he said about it.  He said in that interview I read that he felt that his most important piece was the wheelchair.  It created the most reaction, emotion, an/or feeling from his viewers.  Most people didn't go near it or want to touch it.  It made a lot of people uncomfortable it seemed.  I thought it was interesting that he chose to do a few wheelchairs.  But now it makes sense.  It's intriguing for artists to hear the reactions of their viewers.  Most of the time it's nothing like what you would expect them to think of the piece.  I find it incredibly fun to hear what viewers think of my artwork, so it's cool to hear that an accomplished artist feels similar to me on that point.  

Wheelchair, 2003