More Resolutions

Another year is upon us, and I'm one of those people who insists on setting resolutions for the year ahead. This blog stemmed from a resolution to plan and carry out art experiences for my children on a weekly basis. While I didn't stick to my original plans completely, I'm still glad for the many art projects my kids and I created together. The following is a picture of the Advent Tree before the Advent decorations were removed and replaced with Christmas ornaments on Christmas Eve. It was a fun project, and decorating the tree on Christmas Eve added to the anticipation of Christmas in such an exciting way. Not to mention the fact that we weren't wrestling ornaments from the girls' possession for the entire month of December as we have done in years past.

I have two resolutions for 2011, and they sadly don't involve art projects at all. Instead I am determined to learn Spanish and teach my children Spanish, a language which my husband (and their father) teaches to high school students as a profession, and a language that is incredibly beneficial to know living in California. My other resolution is to organize our belongings. Our garage is starting to get out of control, and the closets in our house just might be crammed with kids' clothing and old toys that I need to go through and give to a consignment sale or pass on to another family. I of course still want to run more and cook more and finish paintings of mine that remain incomplete, but I have found that setting a few serious goals is more realistic for me than is setting multiple goals that I might loose track of and be defeated by.

Nevertheless, you can be assured that we will continue to pursue art projects, and that I will continue to blog about our experiences with those projects here. The next few photos are a recap of some of our Christmas-time crafts, including graham cracker gingerbread houses that the girls made at Elliot's second birthday party, as well as drawings I had the girls do of said gingerbread houses. So often kids spend their drawing time coloring in coloring books rather than drawing on their own, and they don't learn how to use their own mastery of lines (or lack of) to create images from what they see. I will definitely spend more time giving my kids a blank piece of paper and asking them to draw something that is put in front of them. I've already noticed that Rebecca has a standard human form that she uses when drawing people, including round circles with straight spokes sticking out of them for hands and feet. I'm not sure if she came up with this herself or if it has been adopted from one of her preschool friends, but I am determined to help her see past these simplified shapes to what things actually look like. A slow process, to be sure, but an important one just the same.