the messy paintbrush studio

This week I held my first ever toddler art group at my house and I thought it went really well.
I have had this idea to start teaching art classes to children for a very long time, and it occurred to me that it would be great to do it while I am at home with Noah. This is something that I would like to continue doing and someday, maybe make a small business out of it.
My background is in the arts. For as long as I can remember, I have always loved to make art. I have some very early memories of making art from when I was about 3 years old I think. For me, it has always been about expressing myself, expanding my imagination, and making sense of the world around me. Art is like a second language for me and so I take great pleasure in being able to share that with the little ones around me.
To start off, I asked around to my mama friends if they would be interested in coming to some of my classes and immediately I had plenty of friends expressing that they'd like to join in. I decided that I would run the class every Wednesday for one month (to see how I liked it), but have since had to cut a few classes out because of travel plans. *Lesson here....let everyone know that there may need to be some flexibility in when the classes run.
I then started to divy up the spots to the people attending. I figured the 6 children would be the maximum number of kids that could partake in each class, and so I have to divide up the spots so that everyone gets a chance to come. Once I had my classes set up, I then started to plan some themes and activities to do with the groups.
When doing art with little kids, it's really important to remember that it's not always about the end result. Now I should clarify, the older the kid gets (in my experience) then results do matter (to them). Example: Have you ever watched an older child (say 9 years old) erase and erase and erase their drawing because they just can't get it "right"? It can be very frustrating to them...more on this later. The good news is that when children are young, their art doesn't have such limitations, because they don't have the complex understanding of to make something like real. What I'm trying to get it is that art to a toddler is all about the process, all about the experience and very little to do with the end result(although they do like to see their art hung up).
So all that to say, I kept our first class very simple by organizing two activities. Our first activity was to play with homemade playdoh ( I used this recipe and added vanilla extract for scent and glitter for looks). I  brought out some little rolling pins, cookie cutter, small plastic dinosaurs and a few other toys to press into the playdoh. I also brought out some plastic knives for cutting. It was a fun activity and lasted about 10 mins.
While the kids did playdoh, I mixed paint for the second activity, which was stamping/printing with found objects. This is a really simple and easy activity to do with kids. We collected toilet paper rolls, small boxes, sting, and some natural objects such as wheat grass and pine cones. The kids then dipped these objects and stamped on a large piece of paper. I think next time I do it, I'll give each child their own paper so that they can take them home. This activity lasted about 10-15 minutes too. So in total, we did our activities for just about half an hour. We also started out the group with a circle time, sang some songs just to get us comfortable with one another. After our art time it was snack time and we all enjoyed a nice potluck lunch together.
All in all, I'm very excited with how the first Messy Paintbrush Studio art class went. It was simple but it was a good way for myself and the children and the mamas to ease into it, and I walked away with some new ideas for up coming classes, as well as some things that I will change for next time.
I wanted to share this experience with you all in case you ever think you'd like to do something like this with the children in your life. For me, it's a no brainer. I love art and so it's something that comes easy to me and I want to share that with others. But imagine if every parent taught little lessons like these in the subject that they most enjoy, like sports or drama for example. I know that there are lots of classes to sign children up for, but sometimes they can be expensive and they aren't always catered to young children Noah's age (3years old). Just my thoughts.
Hope you are having a lovely and colourful week!
xox
ps. look down! Aren't these two sunshine girls the cutest?

daily rhythms

Lately I've been reading up about some Waldorf teaching/family philosophies and I've been thinking about ways that I can apply some of those ideas to our family life.
This summer, Noah will be turning 3 and he is at such a huge part of his childhood/development years. Because I stay at home with Noah (and Katia too), I really want to make the most of our time together and to make sure that Noah's mind, body and soul are being nurtured in the best ways possible. Really, I just want to be sure that I am doing everything I can to help him along in those ways.
One teaching that Waldorf encourages families to do is to find a daily, weekly, yearly rhythm for your family. The idea behind finding and following a family rhythm is that it is believed that a child flourishes and benefits from having their days, weeks and even the whole year flow with a similar rhythm. Rhythm is about how your family's day flows and knowing what works best for you and your children (eg. snack midmorning or nap early afternoon or nature/outside time before dinner ect). The best way to find your family's rhythm is to look at how your day usually goes and to try and see if there is a similar pattern day in day out. Then, when you find these patterns, you take note and realize that this is your daily rhythm. Trying to keep things consistent and predictable is what works well for children.
The next part to finding your family rhythm is to figure out special weekly events that take place. This could be for example, Mondays are the baking day, Tuesdays are the playgroup day, Wednesdays are the crafting day, Thursdays are the swimming day ect. Then when you start to follow this rhythm, children will know what to expect out of their days and weeks.
And finally a yearly rhythm is based around the idea of the four seasons and year holidays and traditons (Christmas, birthdays, Solstices ect).
So lately I've been reading up on finding our family rhythm and I am really excited about finally "getting it"... it took me a while, I'll be honest, but I feel like I can now identify what our daily rhythm is and I'm feeling confident that this is going to help Noah feel more sure of his surroundings. I just love figuring out what has been working for us and identifying what hasn't been working so well for us too.  I also love learning about ways that I can better myself as a parent. Its an ongoing learning process this parenting thing, isn't it?
Recently  I've been working on some small but important ideas behind Waldorf teachings and I've been approaching these ideas slowly, carefully and intentionally. I've been looking at ways that we can turn down/off the TV (we don't watch much of it anyways) and instead do more enriching activities.
I've always known that TV isn't all that great for young children and I would say that we never really have watched a ton of it, but I have had a love/hate relationship with TV watching over the years. On one hand, I hate plunking a young child down in front of the TV and letting them spend time just staring at a bright box. TV is not an engaging form of media, it asks the person watching it to be sedentary and it does the work for you. I admit, it can be a good way to relax and unwind when I need to turn off my brain, but really, it doesn't sit well with me when Noah watches too much of it. So I have decided that although we will not do away with TV (and movies) all together, that we will try our very best to limit it and that Winslow and I will try to be selective about what he watches. *I should note that yes, Noah does and will watch a mainstream movie from time to time, it's just we want to be comfortable with what he is watching and make sure it is age appropriate.
The next step that I want for us to do with our daily lives is to simplify and slowdown. Yes, even though we live in the slow, laid-back and sleepy North, I still find that our weeks can get really busy with commitments. I have a tendency to over schedule our weeks and I know that this is not what works best for Noah (and he shows it to me by getting overwhelmed when we have yet another place/activity to do). I know that I need to be better about just staying home and having time to just be (play, relax, rest, craft, bake) in our home. Waldorf teachings say that a young child best flourishes in a home life setting....so why do I feel this need to always be out of the house? I need to work on this and I am.
So these are just a few of the ideas that I am setting forth with. September to me always symbolized a new beginning (the start of school), and even though it is still a few months off, I want to start thinking about how we will move forward with us being home together and with Noah continuing to learn and grow. As a former public school teacher, it's just in me to want to teach my little guy (and girl someday too). I have been so interested in learning about alternative ways to learn and teach and grow. It's pretty exciting for me I must say.
And so I will leave you with some photos that I took today when we went on a little adventure on some trails behind our neighbourhood. We have the most beautiful creek nearby our place and I think we are so lucky to be able to go there and play and explore. Today I showed Noah a little stream with a miniature waterfall, an ant hill with lots of busy little ants , and we threw rocks into the water. It was one of those moments where I took a second to be grateful that my kids have such beautiful surroundings around them. ps. Aren't Noah's leggings just hilarious? He lives in them and never wants to take them off.
Hope you are having a wonderful summer. 
xox

For those interested, here is a wonderful book that I have been reading about finding rhythm:
Seven Times Around the Sun: Guiding your child through the rhythms of the day


And here are a few Waldorf blogs that I follow:

• Frontier Dreams
• Bending Birches

these days

Winslow's favourite. Lamb and couscous.

party crashers

These days things seem a little bit hard. We've had the stomach flu twice in the last week (groan), sleep isn't happening as much as it should, and in general I'm feeling like Dada and I both need a little bit of a break from parenting responsibilities. I mean that in the most light hearted way. It's just when the days feel really long and there is no one to jump in and lend a hand, that's when I am reminded that we are so far away from family. Wouldn't it be nice to have a lending hand from time to time? Yes. Oh well.
A little recap of this past weekend....
Saturday night was date night and it went very well despite being interrupted by les enfants multiple times. We managed to have a dinner on our own, well actually Katia was sitting at her high chair, but we just pretended that we were at a restaurant and that she was a person at a different table. Then Noah joined us for dessert. And then we got both kids off to bed before our movie.
One of my New Years goals was to put more effort into doing special things for our marriage. I've seen it happen around me, marriages that don't work out, and I know that it takes work to keep a relationship happy and healthy. So I've been trying hard recently to think of little ways that I can be a better partner to my husband and for ways that we can strengthen our relationship, and that's where date nights fall in.
We can't get a babysitter just yet for Katia, because she is still too young to be left with someone. And money isn't exactly a flowin' if you know what I mean, so that means date nights happen at home, and that's okay. Our date night included a little creativity, some special menu planning,  a movie that we rented on Apple TV, surprise flowers from hubby.....all in all, despite a few interruptions, date night was successful.
Some other exciting news. I have decided to start up a toddler art group that will be held at my house once a week for the month of August. This has been something that I have wanted to do for a very long time and upon realizing that there weren't many organized toddler activities happening in our town over the summer, I decided that I would start one up myself.
I'm very excited for this little group to take place. As some of you may or may not know, my background is in visual arts and education, and although I have decided not to go back to teaching (in the public school system at least), I still do enjoying teaching art a great deal.
 For me, being creative is such an important part of who I am. It helps me express myself, it allows me to go into a place of peace, in a way it is a form of meditation. So it would just give me so much joy to be able to provide children with the opportunity to explore and experience art. I am super stoked about this and will definitely write more about it as it approaches.
And that is all for today my friends. I am going to sign off now and maybe attempt to put away some laundry. Or maybe on second thought,  I'll just sit here for a bit longer, drinking my David's Tea and relax a bit.
xox

who I am in 5 categories

This is a little exercise that the department head from the last school I taught at showed me, and I thought it would be nice to share it with you. It can be used to do brainstorming, list making, categorizing ect. The idea is that often when one is trying to make a piece of art with a theme or come up with ideas for anything for that matter, that it is very easy to get stuck and not have a direction to go in. Much like a writer may use a web to organize their thoughts, tracing your hand is a very visual way to plan, organize and simplify ideas. By tracing your hand you are pushed to come up with at least 5 good ideas (5 fingers) and then you can go from there.

I decided to do a hand with 5 categories that I feel that I fit into.

I chose:

• artist
• mother
• wife
• friend
• family

I think this is a great exercise for self reflection. This could also be a great self esteem project with little kids. Have them come up with 5 things that they like about themselves and then decorate their hand to reflect themselves. I'd love to know if you'd use this hand brainstorming method, if you'd find it helpful or fun.

xox

art idea

I can't take credit for the fantastic masks that you see above. They are the creations of some of my gr. 9 art students and I am just thrilled with how they turned out.

For some reason, a mask unit always seems to be a no fail assignment with students. 

We start off by looking at masks from around the world and discuss what their uses are (I usually show a powerpoint of different images). Then students are asked to design their own masks by making sketches in their sketchbooks. I ask students to make two sketches, one a frontal view and the other a side view so that they can really grasp the concept that a mask should be 3 dimensional and not flat. Then we create the masks! I've done this unit using clay and paper mache. While the clay unit was much easier and less messy than the paper mache unit, I must say that I am very happy with the results of the paper mache. I used an awesome tutorial from this great site and plan on using some of their other tutorials in the future. Paper mache may take time and may be messy but it is an inexpensive way to create sculpture. From this unit I have learned that paper mache is a really versatile medium and it is not only for little children's crafts. 

so much on my mind right now

So much on my mind right now and so little time to blog about it. It seems when I am most busy, I just can't find the time or energy to sit down and write about all these amazing things that are happening. But I fear that if I don't stop for a moment and take the time to get these thoughts and ideas down that they will just disappear and I won't be able to remember what this time of my life was like. And really what's a blog for but to share the events and details from your life with others....and so here's what's been happening over the past while. 

For starts I am now 29 weeks pregnant and am truly excited, thankful and in awe of this whole process. As I get closer and closer to my date  I just can't help but feel a mix of amazing emotions and wonder so many things. Like what will our little guy be like? What  and who will he look like? And most importantly, how well will we rise to the occasion of becoming new parents?Life is about to change forever for hubby and I and I know that we are both really excited for it. 

And then as if having a baby weren't exciting and life changing enough, one Sunday about a month ago we decided to go look at houses, "just for fun" we said. Well what do you think happened? We fell in love with a sweet little house and later that day found ourselves making an offer that was accepted. My sister jokingly said, "what's up with pregnant people deciding to move JUST when they are about to have their baby." Seriously! Apparently we like to make things more complicated for ourselves. But at the end of the day we are going to have that home that I have wanted for such a very long time. A home that we can make into our very own. A  home with a garden, a fireplace, comfy reading spots and a lovely park just down street. We will just have to make it work. 

And finally my school year is coming to an end and soon I will be saying good bye to an amazing group of students and an amazing school. I feel so very lucky to have been able to teach at Ancaster High for the past semester and will miss it there so much. I've had so much fun being able to focus on teaching only art and have so many ideas that I hope to share over the next few months.

And so I'm sure you can understand why it's been a busy few months for us. And for some reason I have this sneaking suspicion that it's only about to get even more busy. Above is a picture of hubby and me taken today when we had a lovely picnic with my aunt and her partner. We don't have many pictures of us together, especially while I am pregnant so I am happy that she offered to take it. As you can see I am getting bigger and bigger.