October 2016 Art a la Carte

I'm finally blogging again! It seems fitting that today I'm blogging about Eric's first Art a la Carte class of this school year. Actually, he had an art class last month, but his art teacher said that was more of a housekeeping class, preparing them for the school year and talking about stuff from last year. She was trying to make me feel better because I had planned on volunteering on the day they originally scheduled the class, which was Friday, September 30th. Eric came home on Monday, September 26, and said that he had art class that day. They changed the schedule and I was SO disappointed! I really enjoy his art classes and I make every effort to volunteer for each one. Luckily, when I found out about the art class schedule, I was already off today, albeit post-call.

This is Eric with his finished product from today, using chalk pastels. I think he should have blended the colors a bit better to cover up the black background and the white sketch lines better, but I love that this piece of art is all his. He made all the decisions about what to draw, what colors to use and where, and when he is done. Even if I wanted to, I would not be able to convince him to do it like I would like to see him do it. He knows what he wants to do and he does it. I'm good with that.

In case you can't tell what the art represents, it's a landscape with rolling green hills with a blue river running through the scenery, which is lit by a beautiful sunset. He even had enough time to put in a couple of trees. Most of the kids in his class took so much time choosing colors, coloring, and blending, that they didn't have any time to add any of those little details, like trees.

I also asked him to add the date. I recently cleaned up a bunch of his old art work (from previous years) and I was disappointed in myself for not adding a date so I knew when he made the art. It just means more to me when I know how old he was when he drew it. Nowadays I usually ask him to either add the date (so I also have an example of his writing), or I will take a picture right away so I have the date I took the photo.

Eric's decisiveness during art class was made more obvious (to me) because one of the kids at his table was as indecisive as he was decisive. She constantly sought approval of what she was doing after every single step and asked a lot of questions that were about to be answered the teacher during her explanation. I was a little tired from being post-call, so I was probably more irritable than usual.

I always like to add a photo of what the teacher posted on the bulletin board complete with art that she made herself to show as an example. She also puts up a little blurb on the artist. This time it was just a picture of David Hockney and an example of his artwork. I love how she also posts the main themes that they are learning about during class, in this case, "landscape", "pattern", and "rhythm". It's like a free art class for me, too.

They moved this art class from the scheduled 8:45-9:45 to 10:15-11:15 because of the special activities for Red Ribbon Week this week. Luckily, one of the other moms sent us a message about this change yesterday. Because of the later time, I didn't have time to go get Eric his usual requested lunch from Wendy's since his lunch was directly after this art class. I told him I would bring him lunch on Wednesday, my next day off, instead.

I'm so glad that Eric still wants to eat lunch at school with me. I love that he still enjoys having me volunteer for his art class. I love volunteering for his art class. I feel like I take a free art class each time. The biggest bonus, of course, is being able to spend time with my youngest because he is growing up so fast!