The Mama Chronicles

Making

In Martha Stewart Living (the first good issue from my vantage in a while) she had an article on how to make nests. Lacy has been making nests for about a year. It began last spring. Out of the blue of spring skies and life after our first snow. She started dragging sticks home when we would play. We had a collection on our porch. I asked her what she was doing and she looked at me with her expression that says "Isn't it obvious." And told me she was making a nest. For her. To sit on. I don't know how other moms would feel. I felt elated, exuberated, supportive! So I let her bring sticks in the car, I had always said no to rocks, and let her build her nests. Which would disappear before she ever got them fully made. It is a hard world for nest builders! Anyway, when I saw this article I had to show it to Lacy. So after getting the limited supplies we could find, I guess I don't where to go in Cincinnati, and letting our sticks soak, we made our nests. We also water-colored big wooden eggs. The nests turned out pretty good for a 4 year old and mom attempting a grown up MSL project together. Happy nesting!

We used the thinnest grapevines we could find and gold instead of brown wire. Lacy wanted to leave it open in the bottom. The birds we bought with the grapevines at Michael's. Not like the article... better, because although my photos lack the beauty and perfection of a magazine layout. Ours are special nests, mother and daughter nests. Not telling who made which one though!!! (I am not sure why this photo is coming up blurry. It is not blurry on my computer.)

Observational Drawing

Following the directions here we tried observational drawing last week. Oliver even tried. I am sure at almost 2 he is not aware of what he was doing. But, to sit down with his big sister, Lacy, and mom and scribble was fun in itself. Maybe confusing why a shoe was on the table. Lacy is 4. We don't do "structure" at our house. Mainly because I am so bad at it. Also because I struggle a lot with what we are actually teaching our children with current mainstream America ways of interacting with the wee ones. For example: This morning at church Lacy went to Sunday school. When I went to pick her up she had this little stamp that she got to take home. She was the only one. The Sunday school teacher told me how good she had been and about how she got a "special prize." Lacy also told me about getting to pick out a special treat from the treasure chest. What I heard was "We were successful this morning in finally getting your child to comply and behave better than the other children this morning. We took the liberty of teaching her that good behavior is rewarded with toys and special treatment." So, at our house we are very bad at structure. Mommy is very bad at structure. We have a few routines like, well, we have two routines. First is bedtime and second is the rule that you can check out the number of books from the library that equals your age. Lately I have been thinking about adding more routine. But at almost 2 and 4 I think that freedom is a good thing.

Nevetheless, we did do a "lesson" We talked about the difference between free drawing and observational drawing. We used special pencils and the good paper. We practiced looking at an object and then looked and drew two things. This all took about 30 minutes. (Max 30, probably 20.) Anyway, it went well. I did have to keep pointing out things to Lacy. Like "What else can you see?" "What do you see on the side of the shoe?" Then at the end we had a very good talk about perspective. Because I did not draw the same parts that Lacy did. The one problem we had was that Lacy kept picking up the shoe, or changing her perspective. So her picture became disjointed showing the inside of the shoe and the side of the shoe. Looking at her drawing the one thing that surprised me was how she was able to write the letters from the brand name. c-i-r-c-o. We haven't started writing letters yet. I tried a little. She isn't interested though. We read a lot and I have worried on occasion. She can sort of write an L for her name. But, here she really did observe. Because those letters c-i-r-c-o. They aren't the letter L and she hasn't ever asked to see them written. I know she has seen them in books. But really they don't have context for her. So she was doing a very, very, good draw of drawing what she saw. Here our our pictures. Lacy's, Mine, and Oliver's.

We also found the old light brite. Circa early 1980's. The bulb still worked and everything. Lacy decided to try doing the flowers instead of the Transformer templates.