Our Last Day

The kids seemed to really enjoy our party last week.  It was a bit crazy but they didn't seem to notice.  Prior to the party, we tie-dyed shirts and decorated coasters/tiles.  We also celebrated Ryan and Bennett's summer birthdays with strawberry cupcakes.  Ryan and Bennett both enjoyed wearing birthday crowns.  

Thank you all for helping to make this year as wonderful as it was.  I'm so glad that I'll get to see each of you over the summer.  It certainly makes saying goodbye much easier.  I love you all! 

Georgia O'Keeffe

We learned about artist, Georgia O'Keeffe, last Wednesday.  Georgia began painting as a young girl and always knew that she wanted to be an artist.  Early on, some of Georgia's teachers tried to change her style. However, Georgia became a great painter and painted until close to her death in her 90's.

Georgia is famous for her paintings of flowers so for Mother's Day, we painted and decorated flower pots. We attached poems to cutout hand tracing and put those in our flower pots along with Impatiens.  They loved lovely! 

We also read the M&M Counting Book last week.  The boys counted and sorted the M&M's by color and graphed them.  They did excellent!  

We'll spend part of tomorrow ty-dying shirt.  Please send your child with a plain white t-shirt if he has one. 

Also, we'll be celebrating the last day of class.  I know, I can't believe that the day is already here!  We are going to go out with a bang tomorrow and I'm expecting it to be one of our best class days yet! 

Klee Watercolors

This past week we studied artist Paul Klee.  Klee came from a musical family.  His father was a church organist.  Klee played the violin.  He later decided to pursue art.  Klee's wife taught piano lessons in their home while he worked on his art at his kitchen table.  He did not have an art studio in his first house so many of his paintings and drawing were small due to the size of his kitchen table.  Klee often combined combined colorful paintings with line drawings so that's exactly what we did last week.  The children first produced line drawings and then filled them in with watercolors.  Also, I really wanted the children to have the opportunity to create sculptures so we also combined that activity with our Klee study last week.  The children took various materials that one might use for a collage.  All of the art projects looked wonderful.   

The boys are getting lots of fine motor practice these days.  I hope that they've discovered a love for art and various art forms.  We've covered a lot of artists in a short amount of time but hopefully they'll be able to use what they've learned later on in life. 

Holly shared a funny story with me last week about Bennett.  Bennette has an Aunt Candace and he told Holly that some people paint on Candace.  He was certain because "Nanny" taught him about an artist that threw paint on Candace.  Obviously, he was confusing Candace with canvas.  I thought it was such a cute story and I'm happy that he remembered something about Jackson Pollock.