Thursday, September 18, 2008

More of How I Spent My Summer Vacation

I've been meaning to post these for a while now.... But I'm easily... hey, look! a shiny object! ... distracted. So I'm catching up.

Urban Kid 1 is in Spanish class at a wonderful place called Language Stars. It's 85 minutes/week of full-immersion and high energy. And supplementing it with Rosetta Stone or an occasional video in Spanish seems to make it all quite effective. Honestly, if money were no object, I'd have her there two mornings a week for a 3-hour session. But it's our Big Ticket Item of our activities. And as I start considering that U-Kid 2 will soon be ready, I've been trying to figure out ways to budget it all in.

Well, God provides, huh? Language Stars has a Scholarship program -- you can do work for them and earn up to 50% of the tuition for your kid. So I applied -- I can sit in front of the TV at night and cut out shapes and such for language classes as easily as I can sit and eat snacks, so why not? And then Language Stars moved to a shiny, new, larger location. And then another Scholarship Mom that I know agreed to paint pretty things on their shiny, new, larger walls. And she was kind enough to fold me into the deal too!!!

So while I have no artistic talent whatsoever, I helped fill in her pencil sketches on the walls. And as my lack of talent became clearer, I learned that I liked painting in the stems and leaves. And the little critters, too. And she couldn't stand painting the stems and leaves, so we became a good team.

And so I got to spend a bunch of hours in August painting and chatting while U-Dad was home with the U-Kids. And I earned all of my Fall semester hours before classes even started. Good deal all around, I think.

And the Scholarship Mom who was so kind as to let me hang on her coat-tails? Melanie, who is co-owner of The Paintbrush, where U-Kid 1 takes (and adores) her Art class.

Thanks, Melanie!

See that puny little purple flower with the weird scribbles on it? That's me figuring out that I don't know how to blend and swirl colors like Melanie does.


Do you think Language Stars will ever see my little note down by the floor in yellow paint?

I did this critter too. (painted her, not drew her...I can't draw stick people.)

At some point, Melanie is supposed to draw and paint a map of the globe across another wall. Neat, huh?

2 comments:

Emily said...

WOW! How I wish we had something like Language Stars around here! My 7YO would go nuts with it! And how great that they let you earn hours!! Very Cool! And your art work is SO much better than any of my attempts. I am still doing stick figures and my 5YO recently broke it to my gently that even those weren't very good :)

Love the blog, sorry I haven't commented sooner!

melissa said...

LOVE the art work! It all looks so bright and cheerful. And yeah...like Em says, my little nephew would FLIP for Language Stars! Sounds fun.