5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Blast Off!

Daddy took Isaak to a gallery last week. There was a painting of a rocket there. Daddy brought paper and crayons for Isaak to draw. Isaak immediately drew the rocket he saw. 

I so wanted to include this in a WW; just to see the comments I'd get. I've been taking too many pictures, and hate putting up pictures of too many themes. I didn't want to wait any longer to post this.

It's a pretty good drawing for a four year old. I'm just going to come out and ask: Is it a penis or a rocket? Sigmund Freud would be proud.

A Breakfast Shish Kabob

Isn't it funny how you can serve something to kids in a different way and they get all excited? Mica helped me put French Toast and fruit on a shish kabob. Daddy on the other hand thought it was a waste of a stick and time. My thought is what's the point of shish kabob sticks if we don't ever use them? It was a task that kept Mica busy for awhile. To me, that totally made a breakfast shish kabob worth it! Mica's help attention span is his weak point. Isaak has a longer attention span than Mica with help related things.

Breakfast included: Spinach leaves and almonds for hair. Grapes, French Toast, blueberries, and apple pieces for the shish kabobs. The little red thing by his chin is a daily vitamin.

Pizza Tour

Isaak got to go on a tour to Godfather's Pizza with his preschool class last week. You might be thinking, "A pizza place for a tour?"

Isaak being a goof!

It was actually fun. Mica had fun when I went with his preschool class many moons ago to.

This time we got to walk around the kitchen and see the freezers, the oven, the dough maker and their party rooms. The kids got to add the sauce to the premade crust, then add the toppings. I got to make one to. It was only 10:30 AM and Isaak ate 2 pieces out of his personal pan pizza! I ate and then snacked on snap peas and grapes later on.

Midterms

I've been wanting to post lately, but I've been so busy. Last week I took nearly 1/2 a day off to go on a pizza tour with Isaak's preschool class. This week is midterms at where I teach. I have a stack of illustrations to grade, another stack of papers to grade, and exams to finish writing.

Two things annoy me about midterms and finals time: 1) The Education Director keeps wanting to add points into the exam. I know it's college, but I have them for computer art classes. To me their work is what matters; their tests should be a side note. Here I am adding questions to their exams. 2) I get students that tell me they have appointments every year on Friday. That's the day I have my class. They want to take the test early. When one student does that, others want to follow. Of course I'm a bit*# if I don't say, "Yes." For some reason it's only 1st year that asks to take an exam before it's time. I hate giving exams out early because there's a possibility that they can talk about the exam to others in the classroom. At least this semester they have computers; that means I can give them a test on a program that randomizes the questions, and I don't have to hand grade a stack bigger than a phone book!

I have a student this semester that keeps crying on me. It's nothing I have personally done. I really truly think something is wrong with him. He's a bright 19 year old. He gets really emotional when students are loud around him. Noise isn't a problem when I have class on Tuesday; it is a problem on Friday. Everyone is rearing to go on Friday. They so want the week to be over with. I've watched the student in concern nearly blow up because he was trying to concentrate, while a girl was tapping her pen against the table. I really don't think the girl was meaning to be annoying. She didn't even realize she was bothering anyone. I saw the boy student's face get all red; like he was going to freak out. I quickly tried to ease the situation before it got out of hand. I said, "Whoever is tapping, could you please stop? I'm trying to grade up here." She was apologizing. I knew she didn't mean to annoy anyone. I was just trying to prevent the boy student from having a melt down. Instead of asking the girl himself nicely to stop, he'd blow up. Well many things like that have happened. I notice he taps his own desk when he's aggravated, his face turns red, he cries and he asks really random off topic questions in class. Questions that barely relate to what I'm going over. Nothing is in his chart from his previous history. I just feel for him. Much of me thinks he has Aspergers Syndrome. I'm not a councilor; I'm not even supposed to council the students. Our school is too small to have a councilor. I moved his desk; like he's a little kid. Now he sits in a quieter part of the room. Part of me has sympathy for him; another part of me wants to be real, and treat him like anyone else. He'll be in the work force in a few years. If I hold his hand, am I doing him any favors? Uggg!

He's not the only student with issues this semester. I could go on. I have an adult student that is one of the more needy ones in the class. He wants an A on everything, but doesn't want to spend the time to get an A. I have a student who's boyfriend cheated on her with her best friend; then held a knife up to her. Another student who's house burnt down to the ground. Seriously there were just ashes left. :( At lease his whole family is ok. It's been a rough year.

Sing, Sing a Song Saturday

I started doing what I call Sing, Sing a Song Saturday.  I'm going to post one song on Saturdays that the boys or I like. 

The song may be part of a movie, a kid's video or just a song we like. I'll try and include why we like it and/or the history of the song/singer.

Looping is what this next artist is about. She, and I want to stress she because a lot of people in her comments called her and he, sets up many loops and proceeds to sing to them. The band is called tUne-yArDs.

Do you know what make me mad as hell? When people get bullied online and/or real life. Merrill Garbus from tUne-yArDs had labels fighting over her because of her unique sound. What happened? She gets made fun of because of the way she looks in YouTube comments. I simply love her soulful voice and how she changes her outfit to match what she's singing about.

She Possesses an expansive sound that marries a coarse folk with the bold pop sensibility of an R&B, African influences, and a lot of DIY aesthetic.

This song is called Powa. It contains two loops going on to start the song out.

This is a tiny desk concert put on by by the support of: NPR.

 This song is called Bizness.

WW: Monster Trucks {Linky}

This last weekend we went to the Lowes Clinic.

The boys made monster trucks.

Can you tell they had fun with their project?

You Can Follow Me Here:

Spider-Man Has a Heart!

Mica was invited to a birthday party on Saturday night. I was going to take Isaak out on a Mommy and Isaak date. Then the birthday party mom messaged me on Facebook, and said we were more than welcome to come if we wanted.

I left it up to Isaak. He at first wanted to go on a date. Then when he saw that everything was Spider-Man he changed his mind.

They even let Isaak in on the games. Such a nice family!

Isaak got really upset when the birthday boy started getting his gifts. I asked, "Why are you upset Isaak?" It wasn't because Isaak didn't get presents himself. He was upset because he couldn't pass the birthday boy a present.

Isaak won one of the games at the party. Mica was mad that Isaak won. He thought there should be prizes for everyone. I said, "Nope! It doesn't work that way son!" When the boys got home Isaak said, "Mica you can have my prize. I'd much rather have you enjoy it."

On Sunday Isaak was wanting whatever Mica wanted for breakfast. I said, "Isaak if Mica jumped off a bridge, would you do that to?" Isaak said, "Well ya I would! I'd have to go find Mica!"

Isaak is in a Giving stage. Mica's in a Me stage.

Meet Mimi

We made the fastest snow woman ever! It turns out that boys, or maybe it's just my boys have no attention span in the snow. They want to stop and throw snowballs every chance they got.

Meet Mimi:

Mimi has button eyes, a carrot nose and Mica found a handle for a bucket in the snow, that was her mouth and she has a leaf in her hat. Mica named her.

Viking Tees

I decided awhile back that I wanted to make viking tees for the boys.

I saw this shirt awhile back from Tea Collection:

I really badly wanted my boys to have a viking tee. I also thought, That would be so easy to make!

Of course I wanted it to be my viking drawing. I set off to make my boys viking tees.

Here's the drawing:

I tried ways to transfer onto a t-shirt. Charcoal on the back and tracing it didn't work, chalk on the back and tracing didn't work either, neither did carbon paper. I took a longer approach and started stenciling it out.

Until I ended up with this x2 (1 for each child):

Then I began to paint it with fabric paint. This is the first time I've used fabric paint. The tips get so clogged. I'm not impressed with the designs of the bottles at all. They bended pretty easily though! I put a white sheet of paper behind the front of the tee, so when it bled it bled onto the paper and not the back of the shirt.

The one with the orange beard is Mica's. The one with the red beard is Isaak's. I sort of let them pick the colors. I say sort of because at first Isaak wanted a green beard and Mica wanted the eyes to be traced with green. I said, "No." to those things.

I decided to put actual rivets in the straps of the hats. If this was actual leather, no problem, it's a t-shirt material though. I had to put fabric under the t-shirt to get the rivets to work.

Isaak's shirt is a bit big. He'll grow into it.

Sometimes You Need a Little Sunshine!

Do you know what made my day this weekend?

Isaak's picture of a sun! He's really into googly eyes; I could tell the sun had them.

Sometimes life isn't on your side. A really horrible article was written about the school I teach at. It was on the front cover of the newspaper this weekend. The guy that wrote the article hadn't even stepped foot in the school's doors. It was about our federal student loan debt being number 1. One really strong thing, is that it didn't mention private loans. We don't offer many of those since we're a private school; some just are not available to the school. Private loans often times have bad interest rates. Since they are private, the government can't track those. Many schools give out private loans along with federal loans. The writer didn't mention a thing about our mock interviews, the fact that we help the students multiple times to write up a better resume, that we have mandatory job shadows, we have them attend Meet the Pros (where they hang out with pros all day long for 2 days), we hold an in-house portfolio review night, we have 2 portfolio classes, they get consistent emails with job opportunities before and after they graduate. Another strong fact if money is an issue: We do not allow just anyone to come to the art school I work at. We turn people away; people that do not have what it takes to expand in this field. Our employment rate is very high compared to most schools. The school does not have an alumni association, so alumni is not called to beg for money. I was pretty upset over this article. I did not feel the writer did his homework.

What the writer did was equal to me reviewing a product poorly without using the product first. It really upset me.

What was really good to see is students past and current making counter comments on the online article backing up the school.

Seeing Isaak's sun drawing just made me much happier.