Dr. Maya Angelou receives Presidential Medal of Freedom

K is Maya Angelou on a school production celebrating Black History Month. Her teacher sent home a whole page of lines to memorize... It opens with:

"Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise, I rise, I rise."

and closes with the words President Obama quoted as he presented Dr. Angelou with the Presidential Medal of Freedom a few days ago:

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."

Dr. Maya Angelou - poet, author, educator, dancer, producer, actress, historian, film maker, civil rights activist.

Photo: Associated Press

Fluttering

I love Kaila's drawing and color choices - working with soft pastels.

Happy New Year!

Starbucks' brown bag.

Scratch-off flakes

Kaila's holiday party at school was a blast today. Pizza, chicken nuggets, chips, veggies, fruits, a bite for everyone. The kids made a frame for their class picture and decorated scratch-off snowflakes! To finish it off they had a book exchange - it was truly fun day at school.

I was happy to visit and spend time with the class today.

Caroling

Daniel was super excited about Christmas caroling yesterday with his class. We were treated to Jingle Bells, The Dreidel, The Twelve Days of Christmas, Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeeer, and Santa Claus is Coming to Town - and yes... a surprise visit from Santa!

Rudolf was the most enthusiastic one for Daniel, we practiced it a lot the last couple of weeks at home and on our ride to school.

The Snowman

A couple of years ago, we saw the animated short Snowman, based on the book by Briggs, with the score played live by the Houston Symphony. It was wonderful. Today, we were back at the Houston Symphony to see a family matinee of the Snowman. This time however, they did not play the movie. Someone narrated the story while the symphony played. Having seen the book and watched the movie where pictures alone tell the story - no words are spoken, I did not like this presentation as much. The real magic of the book is that the illustrations alone tell the story - you interpret it on your own.

After the performance, we joined friends for a holiday lunch and ended the outing with baking gingerbread cookies!

Owl

Schoolwork - connect the dots and color.

I love how Kaila colored her owl. The marker strokes on the wings and body follow the feathers, as does in the eyebrows. The yellow feathers on the feet give her drawing dimension. I also really liked the orange outline around the eyes and feet.

"Who, who... am I?"

Felting

I wish I had time to do all the little things that catch my eye here and there at the craft store. A few weeks ago, I spotted on a shelf Laurie Sharp's book "Wool Pets: Making 20 Figures with Wool Roving and a Barbed Needle" and had to page through it. She makes the cutest little felt animals. I hope to find a workshop in town where I can try felting, just for fun.

Click to look inside on Amazon - "Wool Pets".

The Nutcracker & Dreidels

A traditional Christmas ballet and a party for the kids to play dreidels - that started our holiday season this Saturday.

The kids attended their first Nutcracker performance. Kaila and Daniel were completely enchanted by the music, the dance and the story. The first act went by pretty quickly. The Christmas tree scenario was beautiful making the living room setting come to life. The children playing on stage added fast movement and interest. The Nutcracker becomes a prince after saving Clara from huge mice that invade her room. Intermission and act 2 begins. Clara and the Nutcracker Prince travel to the 'Kingdom of Sweets' and a series of dances begin - Arabian, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, ...and it went on as Daniel falls asleep in my arms 3/4 of the way through and Kaila starts to want to go home...at this point I shift Kaila's focus by asking her to watch the ballerinas' feet very closely to see their movement. That did it pretty well - a few minutes into it she says very quietly, "How can they do that without bars?!" And by 'that' she meant all the footwork and arm positions she started learning in ballet class. That exercise took us through the last 10 minutes of the performance and everyone was happy. The Sugar Plum Fairy and the Nutcracker Prince dance beautifully and as the celebration ends in the enchanted land, Clara finds herself back at home drifting off to sleep and Nutcracker salutes everyone goodnight.

A game of dreidels followed at a friends house. The kids played for pistachios and were treated at the end to making their own marshmallow dreidels decorated with pretzel sticks and raisins!

A fun afternoon for everyone.

Photo Credits (www.HoustonBallet.org)
Ballet: The Nutcracker
Dancers: Amy Fote and Nicholas Leschke
Photo by: Amitava Sarkar

The Butterfly Project

One and a half million innocent children lost their lives in the Holocaust. In an effort to remember them, Holocaust Museum Houston is collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies to be setup in an exhibition scheduled for Spring 2013.

If you'd like to participate, create as many butterflies as you wish and send them to The Butterfly Project.

DIY light pens

Kaila drawing with "finger lights" (on July 31st).

Drawing with light! Neat tools - gotta try it!

LED Light Drawing Pens: Tools for drawing light doodles - More DIY How To Projects

Let's Draw

Kaila has been having fun with her Nintendo DS "Let's Draw". She decided that she wanted to keep some of her drawings and used the DS as a guide, but made her drawings on paper rather than on the screen. And, of course, she always draws herself as the spunky "teenager"...

Sweet Pears

Took some time away from the kids tonight to go to a painting class/BYO Wine party. Amazing how well most projects came out with only basic instructions.

We painted on canvas two "Sweet Pears" on a table top. I documented the 'evolution' of my painting, just for fun. The background for me was the most difficult, as you can see in the finished product... anyway, it was a fun Monday evening.

All Pink

I took this photo of my glamourous princess on the left a couple of days before receiving the postcard on the right from Melissa in Ottawa.

Too funny...

This is a really neat calendar by Nils Kjeldsen.

Spelling?

“ I DN'OT GVIE
A DMAN FOR
A MAN WHO
CAN OLNY
SELPL A WROD
ONE WAY.”
- MRAK TIWAN

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt.

I read this text at the San Francisco Exploratorium a few years ago. I was quite surprised and amazed that, yes, I could actually read it!

I love you, too.

Happy Valentine's Day - Daniel. February 14, 2010.

"Can people fly?"

For the past few weeks Kaila has been fixed on the idea of flying. Not flying as in an airplane, but flying as birds fly. She has asked several times if people can fly. As I respond to her that people can only fly in their imagination and in their dreams, she just gives me a pensive look and an "Oh, okay..."

For the longest time I had this recurring dream of flying over towns and fields. In these dreams I could actually control where I went by moving my open arms like wings and gliding with the same ease as birds. I enjoyed these flying adventures and many times would remember them. Most other dreams for me get lost, no memory whatsoever.

Maybe Kaila is having similar dream adventures? Or maybe she has just been reading about magic carpets. Last week her class was discussing Cinderella and they made a few projects associated with it. Kaila drew a nice pumpkin coach for Cinderella, but for herself the pumpkin turned into this beautiful carpet. A magic flying carpet, I'm sure.

The Magical Shoe

"The magical shoe has many colors..."
What would you do if you had one?

This was a kindergarten school project in Nov/Dec 2009 based on the poem by Linda Ball.

Bench Monday

Kaila and I had a great lunch date today. We walked around a park for an hour and took some pictures along the way. I posted one of the pics on Bench Monday (Flickr pool).