Art

The kids are excited to go back to school next week... back to a known schedule, back to friends both old and new to play with, back to new teachers to meet and learn from. Before the new school year starts though, I wanted to post one last thing from last school year: pictures from the Fine Arts Festival.
God has gifted my kids with a LOVE for creating art!! Since they were small they could each be entertained for hours with paper and crayons. They started out drawing me at the ripe old ages of about 4 or 5. None of their talent, such as it is could be traced back to their mother. Their dad's genes were definitely in on that and perhaps some Forsen genes that skipped a generation! They love to draw, paint, color, create, sew... mostly in an orderly fashion (that is where their mom's genes come into play). We have been SO thankful the past few years to have an art teacher at Sahel Academy that has challenged them to think wild, simple, colorful, detailed, classical, practical, yes, even (gasp!) messy and outside-the-lines thoughts in the art room. With her they used paints and pastels, they copied masterpieces and tried their hand at traditional Asian art. They illustrated books and pretended they were cavemen. She is the one that was the champion for the now annual fine arts festival. Hours upon hours of work are represented in the play performed, the music played, and the art of all types hung and displayed around the library for that special weekend. This year when the kids return, Mrs. P-H won't be there. They (and we!) will deeply miss the input she had into their lives. Though from a family that is stuctured from her they learned to be spontaneous. Though Mom cares more about words and books, from her they were encouraged in color and texture. We know that God will use Mrs. P-H elsewhere to challenge and grow more students. We are so thankful that someone new has come to challenge our elementary artists in different ways. But our thankfulness doesn't mean we won't miss Mrs. P-H and her family! Here are pictures of each of our artists at the fine arts festival this past May: Heidi with her art teacher, Mrs. P-H and her Best in Show for 5/6 line drawing. Kay followed by her colorful painted scarecrow. Tom pointing to his "cave drawing" that won an Honorable mention in the Kindergarten age group.

Fine Arts Festival: Heidi's turn to shine

This Sunday Heidi played the piano for the offertory at our evening service. She was nervous, but she did a fine job. She had the first part memorized, and then couldn't find her place when she ran out of memory, so she started again, this time remembering to look at the music the entire song. In honor of Father's Day, she played the hymn "This is My Father's World."

The piano playing reminded me though that I neglected to get back to blogging some of the girls' end of the year activities; one of them being the fine arts festival at school. During the two evenings the spring play was being performed, the art teacher set up k-12 artwork from the entire year in the library. She worked really hard to pull all this together, and it looked fantastic. All of the students had at least one piece of artwork in the show. Previous to the showing, judges had awarded a ribbon to the "best in show" for each grade grouping (K, 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, etc). There were also two "runner up/well done" ribbons given in each category. It was fun to see all the things they had been learning in art this year. Heidi won "Best of Show" for her picture shown here. Here is Kay standing next to some of her artwork. You can see it at the top of the matting above her head with the large painted sun. Before the play and during intermission times people were free to browse the work which also included writing the students had submitted.

Students were also encouraged to sign up to perform musically as well. (Hence my piano connection, I'm sure you were wondering how that came in!) My very enthusiastic daughters both signed up to play the piano, despite the fact that they had only been back into piano lessons for a few weeks (Kay never having had previous lessons at all)! But they did very well, and it was nice for them to play for the small group gathered in the library. Here is a picture of Heidi playing "Amazing Grace." Kay played "God is So Good," one of my favorite songs! Unfortunately, my camera battery died just as she started playing, so I didn't get a picture of her at the piano. I am very thankful that our school here continues to expand and explore new ways kids can develop the gifts God has given to them.

I couldn't end this blog without this picture of the girls from that evening. Here it is considered VERY COOL to have a "uniform" where several friends, or even better, your whole family wears an outfit made of the same cloth. The girls and I all three had these dresses made. We all like them as they are very comfortable, and the girls were SO excited that they have "twinsie" dresses with Mom. I must confess, we haven't all THREE worn them together yet... perhaps my Western upbringing cringes thinking about being "twins," but who knows, perhaps we'll coordinate yet. Heidi is a very avid coordinator after all! Wonder where she gets that from!? :)