In Like A Lion

When they say March always comes in like a lion or a lamb, I know they are usually talking about weather; but somehow, it seems appropriate to say our schedule has come in like a lion as we have been really busy.

The last day of February, Will had a field trip to the art museum because one of the projects the school was doing combined art, math, and language arts. There was a tour of the current exhibit, and the kids learned about impressionistic art -- landscapes and portraits, then they did a quick art project that reinforced some of the lessons they learned on the tour.

Friday, March 1st, Will had a presentation day at school for science. The assigned project was to design an exhibit for Discovery Science Place (the local children's science museum) that uses simple machines. Usually his project teams are made up of the third- and fourth-graders in his class, but this time was a bit different. Every team had four people, with at least one each from third, fourth, and fifth grades. At first, Will wasn't crazy about being the youngest in his group, but it wasn't long until he was boasting about how much fun it was to work with this team and how well they worked together. On presentation day, parents were able to see all the exhibits "in motion," and the science museum sent representatives to select seven (from Will's campus) to actually be displayed at the museum one weekend. Will was a bit upset his team's project wasn't selected, but he had enough fun with the project to make up for any disappointment.

Friday night, our family and a friend of Will's (who might as well be considered family by now) went to see the a musical production of The Jungle Book. It was fun for all of us, but the kids loved it! Afterwards, we stopped for a sweet frozen treat.

Our weekend was a flurry of home-bound busyness as we were scrambling to get all the things done we haven't had a chance to do: cleaning, laundry, sorting through all the kids' and adults' clothes, mowing and yard work, refilling bird feeders and baths, putting up another bluebird house, and getting ready for the rest of March since it will be so busy.

Monday morning, I took the younger kids to school while Allen took Will and Kaleb. Then I headed to Will's school to help set up for another presentation day. The school kids were all really excited to show the projects that combined art with math. In math, the third and fourth graders were studying geometry (shapes, symmetry, angles, and patterns.) This was also the first art project that the kids got to decide what they wanted to make -- that is what I think they LOVED about the art. They did some drawings in math, and in language arts, they've been working on essays describing why arts are important in schools. The prompt they were given was something along the lines of "many schools are cutting funding for the arts because they feel like math, reading, writing, and science are much more important. Do you feel this is a good idea or not? Why?" Though I haven't seen the finished essay yet, the kids had posted some poems about shapes and angles, and Will has been talking with me a lot about why art is an important part of education.

Will's group made a model of the Titanic. I was fascinated with the details he shared with me the last few weeks as they have been working on this at school. One day, he explained their team was disappointed that they didn't estimate the size of part of the ship correctly. The Titanic had four smoke stacks and they only had room for three. He further explained that the real ship only had three working stacks and the fourth was for decoration -- to make the ship look more powerful that it really was. He continued to explain details that I never knew (which isn't saying much, since all I know was that it was a big ship that wasn't supposed to sink-- I didn't even watch the movie.) When I asked how he knew all this, he looked at me like I was silly and told me that of course, their team looked it all up.... just because. His art teacher later explained that the kids really wanted the inside to be accurate and tried to construct part of it correctly even though it wouldn't be seen. These kids had big smiles when they told passers-by about their Titanic and the angles and shapes and lines of symmetry. They were quite proud and had reason to be. At the end, the teacher asked to keep their project (other groups decided someone would take the projects home) and I think the plan is for her to help them submit it to an arts festival later this year.

Here are a few other sculptures I really enjoyed (each scale on the snake is a separate origami triangle! and the guitar-thingy is made mostly of crushed aluminum foil):