Mice skate close to the edge, write 8s

Thanks so much to Kim of Hummus Anonymous for getting me inspired for this week's art class.  Seeing the finger figure skates made by her daughter got me looping about the mental ice. But like most inspirations, I was caught in the crossfire of memories, images, words, and events.

Snow on the playground made Tuesday magical. Getting the smallest students bundled for a real life snow experience involved lots of turning sleeves right-side-out, and aiming thumbs into their own mitten studio apartment.

The five year olds are practicing writing the number eight.  This number is both the beautiful, graceful, double om of loops on ice, and purest torture for most young writers.  S S S, then / / /.  Link the bottom to the top.  No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, don't take that detour!  Don't double back around!

My ankles are too wobbly for skating, and my shoulder too shaky for holding the picture book back-handed.  Ed and Rebecca Emberley's picture book, Mice On Ice, added more ideas to the mix.  Next week the kids will make a 3-D ice rink.  The white crayon wax resist with the blue watercolor/black ink wash looked nicely icy.

"You are skating on thin ice" implies risky behavior without the disrespectful attitude associated with "pushing your luck". While I was pleased to find Kristi Yamaguchi's Olympic "Blue Danube" program online, I can't find Mary Tyler Moore's classic figure skating spin from the early 70s.

I'm midway between the eighth anniversary of my mother's death and the first anniversary of my dad's. As Dad worked through paralyzing grief at Mom's death, he found a little window of light.  "I'll never have to watch figure skating again!"









© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Brightening your day?

Saturday morning I headed out to work and found myself following a white pickup truck with a window box full of red, pink, and white vinca.  What was wrong with this picture?  I know, I know, I'm long overdue for a visit to the ophthalmologist.


The pickup was not going very fast.  When I pull alongside at a stop light I could see the flowers were not growing in an automotive window box.  The nursery flats of flowers were sitting atop the metal truck tool box.  Alas, I couldn't reach my camera.

As little kids in the Sixties, we always drew window boxes full of flowers when we made pictures of houses.  There were required standards and conventions not all that different from the restrictive covenants of today's homeowners associations.  Never mind that there were very few Eastridge homes with window flower boxes, and none with red brick Santa chimneys.  

The drawing traditions handed down from Big Kids to Little Kids were strict.  There were standards to uphold that went far beyond mere coloring inside the lines!  All trees must have apples year-round.  All trees must have a hole in the trunk for an owl.  


All vehicles must have shining yellow headlights, day or night, even though the smiling sun is always drawn in the upper left-hand corner of the paper,  What if all pickups had window flower boxes? All cars, too?
  


What if all Sundays had a gift of tomatoes, and a page-turning murder mystery set in Chicago? A mental health lunch at Corner Bakery with a good friend?  Wandering in World Market and riding shotgun through the carwash?  Making hummus and pesto?  What a wonderful world that would be!   


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Free time valentine

The first grader brought me this valentine he drew during his free time after lunch. Because we were talking about penguins during art class, he drew his version of a penguin on some scrap paper. I love that the penguin has a toll-free number to call to report problems!

The little guy didn't really know why he made the penguins inside the card blue, but he did say he wasn't happy with the hearts he drew. He thought they looked more like hats. One blue penguin holds his heart on a string like a balloon.



I gave him a hug and told him how much it meant to me that he used his time to make the card. Many valentine cards will be exchanged at the school party tomorrow, if we aren't iced out by the weather. This one beats anything from the drugstore or a class project made with fun foam.

© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

Dem bones

My recent bone density scan showed a 9% improvement in my spine, although I'm still in a danger zone for osteoporosis. The improvement over a year and a half was not due to the expensive prescription I couldn't afford and eventually forgot completely. It was partly due to taking calcium supplements. Calcium is inexpensive. Take it!

I mainly credit my role model efforts at preschool lunchtime for my bone density improvement. Every brown bag lunch I make contains a food from the dairy group. Lately I've rediscovered cottage cheese with fresh tomato slices, black pepper, and dill weed. It's simple and delicious.

Been pondering how to sneak some nutrition education into a pre-Halloween art class about dancing skeletons. One group will use styrofoam and draw skeletons for block-printing. The youngest kids will work together to make a skeleton on the longest lunch table with Wikki Stix, then make a crayon rubbing on butcher paper. An older group will take turns posing while classmates draw toothpick/raisin figure drawings. The oldest kids will work together to make a skeleton paper sculpture by folding, cutting and curling paper strips.


DanActive yogurt drink is the popular new kid in the the school lunchroom. DanActive is milk fermented by Lactobacilus casei along with sugar and live yogurt cultures. Students usually bring a 3.3 oz. plastic bottle of DanActive contains 90 calories. DanActive is supposed to reduce cases of pediatric diarrhea and allergies. A bottle contains 10% of the daily value of calcium needed, while containing 17 grams of sugar, or about four teaspoons.

Do kids really need to drink Lactobacilis casei everyday? What's wrong with drinking milk? I'm not a dietician, but I am curious. Please comment if you know the answer.

The lunchbox thermos bottle can be a creepy source of bacteria if not washed properly everyday. That was not my favorite task as a mom doing the dishes after supper. Even if washed carefully, thermos bottles still get a certain odor that taints the flavor of the milk. I can understand parents wanting an easier solution for the daily lunchbox.

Most students bring milk in the form of a Horizon organic single-serve aseptic package, similar to a juicebox. The plain unflavored box (120 calories) has 12 grams of sugar, or about three teaspoons in 8 ounces. The flavored strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla 8 oz. drinks contain between 27 and 31 grams of sugar, or about seven teaspoons, and 180-200 calories. The drinks contain 30% of the daily value of calcium needed.

The bottle of 2% milk in my refrigerator has 12 grams of sugar, or about three teaspoons in a single 8 oz. serving. A serving provides 30% of the necessary calcium daily value, and clicks in at 130 calories.

Other kids bring Silk soy milk in 8.25 oz. aseptic drink boxes. These drinks provide 35% of the daily calcium requirement, and have 16 grams of sugar, about four teaspoons. 130 calories.

Many times in Grimm's tales, a child is sent off with a hunk of bread wrapped in a cloth. The lucky child, or the favored son might also leave home with a chunk of cheese. A kindergarten student was learning about mountains today, and vague recollections of Johanna Spyri's Heidi and Peter sitting with the goats on the mountaintop flitted through my mind. Cheddar cheese contains no sugar, but has a high level of saturated fat. A one-inch cube meets 12.3% of the calcium daily value. I'm thinking chasing goats around in the Alps might negate the saturated fat...

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

The Green Night Heron, masked superhero

The eight year old boy didn't really want to enlarge his sketch of the gray-green bird for the painting project, but it was his best bird sketch in the little drawing pad. He had caught the bird's posture so well in his initial analysis. This bird wasn't brightly colored, and it wasn't going to be quick and simple. We looked at the 8x10" magazine photo together.

"You know what I like about this bird?," I asked him. "He's wearing a mask. He's carefully watching and waiting, noticing everything. See that piercing stare? He's standing totally still, but he can catch his prey in a flash! When I lived in Oklahoma, I used to see these little herons around the creek by my house. They weren't big, but they were so disciplined, like a karate master. They stood so still and were so camouflaged they could surprise any enemy. I had to be really alert to notice them on my walks. Look at the way his wing feathers make that zigzag diamond pattern. How cool is that!? I know you like to draw superheroes. Man! Doesn't The Green Night Heron sound like a cool name for a crime-fighter? You could make a whole comic book of drawings about The Green Night Heron's adventures after you learn how to make the bird look strong and smart."

I'm not bragging. I'm more relieved. My student took the bait and did some of his best work ever. Feel free to use any part of this motivational speech. Before this decade is out, The Green Night Heron will go to the moon. Ask not what The Green Night Heron can do for you...

True, I had my bird names confused. The bird in the magazine photo was probably a yellow-crowned night heron, not a green heron or a black-crowned night heron. It's neck was too short to be a little brown heron. There's no such thing as a green night heron in my bird book, because, of course, a super-observant crime-fighter must keep his identity a secret, sort of like Dick Cheney in his bat cave.

[I really did love espying herons and egrets on walks near Bankside Drive in Edmond, OK, back in 1988.]

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

J p O x

Looks like I fell asleep with my head on the keyboard, but it was actually a very successful drawing project for the preschool and elementary students. Driving home at six o'clock Monday, I was admiring the winter sunset of dusty lavendars, pinks, and smoky blues. Against that background the traffic lights were glowing red or green. At each stop the birds were coming to roost on the telephone wires. They were twittering in such a loud, large chorus as to overpower my car radio. It was so loud I couldn't even think.

Ah. Those moments when we can't even think are often the best for receiving inspirations. Arriving home, I checked my favorite blogs. Randel Plowman had posted this collage of band-aids and telephone wires:


I check Plowman's A Collage A Day blog for visual refueling several times a week.

No time to take photos of birds on the wires above the Walgreens parking lot across the way, and nothing right in my files, so I had to search online to prepare for my class. When I showed the students a photo, they clamored, "I've been there! I've been there!" Probably not, since it came from Britain. It's a copyrighted photo, so I won't put it in the blog, but if you follow the link and click through the slideshow you'll probably say, "I've been there," too. Birds crowd a crisscross of power lines in this bane of any urban business owners with lighted parking lots. The birds are loud and frequently messy, but they are NATURE to a child riding in a safety carseat and looking out the SUV window.

My goal is to help children become noticers and observers of their environment, as much as it is to draw or mix paints. It's nice to study meerkats and marsupials, but kids need a connection to the nature right here at home. If I can get them to notice starlings and grackles crowding onto a telephone wire, maybe they will catch sight of a cardinal on a bare branch some cold morning, or a mockingbird singing atop a chimney. If they look up they may feel privileged to see the aerobatic ballet of a scissortailed flycatcher or pause to note the red-tailed hawk surveying her world from the top of a power pole:



Much of the art project was a directed drawing, meaning that I drew samples to be copied. We were drawing birds on a wire, but using letters to begin our birds. Directed drawings help kids feel competent and confident to get started on a picture. I always build in opportunities for students' own creative additions.



J is for making jays and other birds with crests.

p is for birds who perch like the class parakeets.


O is for sleepy birds with their feathers all puffed up against the cold.


x is for a grumpy purple martin who doesn't want to be crowded.




[Is this one an opera libretto or a Looney Tune?]

We made our telephone wires by drawing a line across a sheet of colored letter-size paper, then cutting along the line. I still remember the awe I felt the first time I was shown how to slide the cut pieces apart to create a line against a black background paper. Right now I'm looking out my window at three power lines glowing flamingo pink in the late sunshine against a pale blue sky. To me the blue sky paper must have been cut and slid to let the pink paper show! You can imagine how I perceive jet contrails.



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Portrait of the blogger as a middle-aged teacher

According to my early elementary art students, I look like one or all of these drawings. We spent Tuesday afternoon analyzing faces and head shapes, and we all drew each other. It was only fair if I drew them, that I would sit for a portrait, too.


Let me just say that is a scalloped neckline, not chesthair!! Next week we will talk about shoulders.

At the end of class the students drew primate portraits from photos. They did an impressive job analyzing the faces of gorillas, snow monkeys, orangs, and chimps on their own.

Lava Lanch

Yes, it rhymes with "branch". The elementary art kids had a grand time making transparent constructions today with an assortment of clear and tinted plastic boxes. They added other metallic, reflecting, and see-through items to create intriguing and nearly-neon designs.



The first Dallas Opera my son and I attended was Tchaikovsky's "The Queen of Spades" in 2003. The set included a clear plexiglass staircase that looked like it came from Target's bath decor and toothbrush-holder department. The student constructions today were more interesting:

"It goes up and up and then it's like a waterfall!"

"There's a coffin on the next shelf."

"It's a runway for models at a fashion show!"

"No, it's a Lava Lanch!"



I didn't know whether to launch lava projectiles with a medieval catapult, or lunch on magma salad sandwiches on mica. Heaven knows, I've eaten some school cafeteria lunches that sat in my gut like psychedelic warmed wax blobs. During the ensuing debate the kids agreed that "lava lamp" was an incorrect pronunciation. "Lava lanch" was the correct term! I'm picking my battles on this controversy.

After building transparent/reflecting constructions, the kids started drawings of their own sculptures. How do we describe transparency? I'm including some of the works-in-progress:







Maybe Cinderella lanched her celebrity career with glass slippers.

Positive ID

Brought a bunch of gourds to Elementary Art class. I love the variety and color of gourds. Even more, I love teaching children to notice that variety and color.

What's the same?

What's different?

Gourds teach color, pattern, shape, and texture. I just facilitate the lectures, like the person who makes sure the big electric coffee urn is gurgling at an early morning workshop.

The kids were having trouble with the idea of different. I don't know if each gourd in the cornucopia has a different fingerprint or DNA. I do know the kids are aware of tv cop show lingo:

1. You witnessed a burglary. One of these gourds committed the crime. How will you describe the gourd perp to the police detectives?
2. You are asked to go down to precinct headquarters to view a line-up. What distinguishing features will you look for?
3. Please help the police artist create a sketch of the squashish criminal.
4. Be sure to draw both the face and the profile.
5. Which gourd looks like Harry Morgan on "Dragnet", and which looks like Art Carney on "The Honeymooners"? Okay, I didn't ask the kids, but I've always gotten these two confused. Harry Morgan was on "M.A.S.H." Carney was in "Harry and Tonto".

The kids got it. They started looking for each gourd's birthmarks and scars. They compared the weights, widths, and heights. They named each gourd. Their drawings improved. It was intriguing to find they automatically divided the gourds into presumed innocent or presumed guilty categories based on physical differences. Some thought the bumpy white gourd could never commit a crime. Others thought "Cauliflower" was a nefarious mastermind.

It wasn't elementary, my dear Watson, but I was grateful for this artistic trip down to precinct. We named our drawings "C.S.I.: Gourd Squad."

I was left wondering why I could instantly name the "Mod Squad" actress, Peggy Lipton, even though I never watched that late Sixties tv show.

I just finished reading Eleanor Updale's teen novel, Montmorency and the Assassins. Professor Cesare Lombroso is fictionalized in the book. Lombroso is considered the father of criminal anthropology, although his theories about the facial characteristics of "born criminals" are no longer accepted. You can't tell a criminal gourd just by looking at its face, but you can remember its identifying features!

Thumbprint Theater Presents...

...a live performance on the Illusion of Space Stage! Thanks to my weekend puzzling about optical illusions and opera illusions, I decided to use a theater as the way to teach about perspective. It was that or a microwave oven. Both help explain the view of a box interior. Both help kids understand drawing objects so they appear to be on the floor of the box. The theater just seems more entertaining than watching a Stouffer's Spinach Souffle go round and round for 4-5 minutes before stirring.

I hope you enjoy the shows!

Where the Wild Things Arles

Did Maurice Sendak have Van Gogh in mind when he wrote and illustrated the classic picture book, Where the Wild Things Are? Bet so, at least off on the fringes of consciousness. The fictitious Max and the painter Vincent have almost the same bedroom. Vince painted the bedroom at Arles in a way that helps me introduce perspective to my kindergarten students. They understand the room--bed, table, chairs, mirror, pictures on the wall, floor. It just needs a nightlight and a "special bunny" stuffed animal. The strangeness of Vince's bedroom painting fits with the dream quality when "that very night in Max's room a forest grew... and grew..."



These are our first efforts imagining a connection between Max and Vincent. We hope when you find your supper waiting for you it is "still hot."

Mosaic Vase

More Palmolive art! Students aged 5-8 made some lovely mixed media pictures about a green glass mosaic vase of flowers. Beside the monoprints, this project used pencil, Sharpie pens, and oil pastels on light blue construction paper.

Dream Team

I have the joy of teaching a delightful, polite, enthusiastic, smart group of eight and nine year-olds right now, many of whom I've known since they were three or four years-old. All I have to do is hang an idea out there on the wind, and they are running with it. I made a few suggestions about how to make their drawings successful, and every child applied at least one suggestion. When they had questions about the rain forest animals and how to draw them, they looked up the information or images in my library books with a little help.

We started building the form for the almost life-size jaguar that we are going to papier mache. They were so pumped! I would not be surprised if they arrive tomorrow with all sorts of solutions to the problem of the big cat's ears. One of them might even research whether owls live in the rainforest. I need to check on that myself.

This is the class of my dreams!

December

This was an incredibly beautiful sunset in Lincoln, where there is no snow.
This was a pretty strange day in Plano, Texas, where there is.

These are delightful penguins at the South Pole, by students age 3-8.

This is not a sleeping polar bear at the North Pole.It is a 1991 300 ZX in need of many expensive repairs before it becomes driveable, so it's basically hibernating.