19 | April | 2013 | Mama Cormier

….maybe I should have broken these topics into separate posts

After yesterdays post I’ve had people ask me all day if I was okay. I’m fine. I was literally, just tired. I need to get more sleep and it was after all an exceptionally busy day yesterday. The headache I complained about hasn’t returned and I feel much less stressed today. Now, the kids, on the other hand were more exhausting than usual and I wasn’t the only one complaining. Is there a full moon looming? I think it’s partially due to spring fever. We’ve had a couple of warm days and it is Friday as well.

I hope everyone enjoyed the those warm moments because the temperature is about to go down again. When I got home tonight my daffodils were in full bloom so I took a few pictures before the winds started. When I went out later I noticed that some of the flowers have already been knocked off the plant.

Yesterday I told you about a new project that I started with my grade 2 students. I had these fabric crayons given to me many years ago and I wasn’t quite sure how I would use them. I knew that there were quite a few students in my grade 2/3 class that had finished the last project and the rest weren’t far behind. I packed up all the fabric I had along with the iron and ironing board and hoped for the best. I hadn’t even made a sample or tried out the crayons to see if they worked…..not always a wise move.

We took the rough copy paper we had used on the last project and on the unused side I instructed the students to make a drawing using the fabric crayons. I gave the dimensions they were to work in but I gave them free reign as far as the subject for their design went. I demonstrated how much crayon they needed to use in order to get a nice print and I suggested that if they didn’t want to draw something realistic they could draw a doodle design and fill in the spaces with lots of different colours. Away they went. Creativity at it’s best.

When people looked at what the grade 2s had done, many thought that I had drawn the design and they coloured it in. Not so. From start to finish the entire piece was their own creation. Through trial and error we discovered that we had to use quite a bit of pressure with the iron and if we went over the piece several times the print would become more intense. The other thing that we learned was that synthetic fabrics produce a more vibrant print compared to the cotton fabrics. I liked both. Each had it’s own special quality. When you see the examples, I included the original crayon drawing and then displayed the one or two prints next to it. Enjoy!

…..arrived at school at 7:40 and left at 5:15

It wasn’t the long hours that made me tired, because I often stay later but more importantly is was what I did in that time. I arrived early for the girls’ soccer team tryouts. At lunch I played floor hockey in the teachers vs students game. I scored the turn around goal. The noise from the fans watching the game was incredible. My ears were ringing for awhile.

Right after the game I went straight to my art class with my grade 2/3 class. It was a very busy class. I introduced transferring a design from paper onto fabric using fabric crayons and a hot iron. Of course I did the ironing. The resulting prints were beautiful and I will photograph them tomorrow and share them with you in the next couple of days. This project was so popular that students wanted to stay in class through recess so that I would iron their print onto a piece of fabric of their choice.

After recess I headed down to my grade 2/3 class that I usually take to the library but today they had a special dance workshop with an artist from Arts Express. For the next 40 minutes I participated with the students and did the warm up activities and learned a few hip hop steps. At this point I’m really starting to feel the exhaustion set in and I still have to do ‘Girls on the Run’ from 3:00 to 4:30.

After the dance workshop I headed back to the previous class and ironed one more print and then went back to the library to read up what I had to do for tonights ‘Girls on the Run’ activities. The girls were particularly excited tonight and it was difficult keeping them focused on the lesson.

After dinner I headed off to my pottery class. Despite a wicked headache I worked on my jar for over two hours, carving a design onto the lid. I took some pictures so that you could see my progress. I’m going to cut it short tonight so that I can get to bed and do it all again tomorrow.

Cheers!