Christmas Art and Music

So, I was planning on having posted these Christmas pictures the boys made and a video of a cute Christmas song Kolby plays on the piano before Christmas, but it didn’t happen. Oh well. They’re still cute. Enjoy!

Eli and Kolby each made these pictures at preschool (I love art work that includes the kids' handprints!):


And Kolby was so proud of himself that he colored these pictures without even getting outside the lines:


And here is Kolby playing "Good King Wenceslas" on the piano:

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Art Work

So, here’s a fun little project that I have gotten all caught up on lately. At an enrichment meeting about organization at Sonia Cole’s house last year someone made the suggestion of scanning children’s art work, and then making a computer screensaver out of it. I liked the idea of scanning the artwork, and so I decided to make art books for each of the boys. I was glad to come up with a good way to keep their artwork organized and to have it accessible for them to look at anytime they want. Plus, this way we won’t end up with a cardboard box of old frail falling-apart art projects that lose little pieces of paper and glitter every time they are touched because the glue has dried out or the tape has stopped sticking. Also, I don’t have to try to figure out how to fold up a painting done on an oversized piece of construction paper – I can just scan the picture and print it out in the size to fit their books. So, whenever the kids have a fun picture or project that I like, I put it in a pile in my computer desk, and then every once in a while I take a little time to scan all of the pictures in the pile (or, if it is something that won’t fit into the scanner I just take a picture of it). I add the date and a description, if needed, and then print the pictures out and slip them into plastic page protectors in each child’s art book. That way they can flip through anytime they like and see the pictures they did when we first traced around their little hands as babies up through their most recent masterpieces. The boys like to sit down with each of their books and compare the pictures that are similar (from when they were in the same preschool or art classes), and then show each other the ones that are different because they did them on their own. It’s fun for them to see that I value their work enough to make a nice book out of it, and for me to see them enjoying the books that I took the time to put together. Here are some of their masterpieces:

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Birthday Shirt

The boys told me that they wanted to make something for Daddy for his birthday, so we headed to Michaels. When we got there, I had no idea of what we could make. The boys wanted to get everything they saw in the store, but I kept having to ask them if they thought that Daddy would really like to get things like ribbons or glitter-glue. After a while I thought of making him a shirt, and so we got some fabric paint and some iron-on letters for it. Then we spent the next couple hours rushing around the house trying to get it all finished before Michael got home from work -- running the shirt through the washer and dryer to pre-shrink it, ironing on the words "No. 1 Dad," taking each boy out into the grass one at a time to have them put their handprint on the shirt (it took Grandma and I to try to get Isaac to open up his little baby fist to make a handprint without smearing the paint, and I think that turned out pretty well), washing all their hands, and then using a blow dryer to get the paint on the shirt to dry so we could wrap it up. Luckily Michael got home from work a little later than I had thought he would, so we finished before he got home, and Kolby and Eli were really good and didn't ruin the surprise before he opened it the next day on his birthday. I think it turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself.