The Finishing Season

It's that time of year again.  The finishing season.  In the past two weeks we've had a band concert, gymnastics finals, school finals, end of grade testing, and our big Masterpiece performance and gallery show!  It has been a crazy few weeks as we prepared for all of that!  So you'll have to excuse the lack of posting around here.  If I haven't lost everyone, stick with me.  The next few posts are going to be big. Ending with a big announcement.

Let's start with band...

Earlier this spring, the boy auditioned and was moved up to bass clarinet from clarinet.  It was a pretty big deal around here!  He worked really hard for it and was rewarded for the hard work.  (Life lesson? Check!)  He started this school year not even knowing what a clarinet looked like.  He walked into his first band class not knowing how to play an instrument or read music or even how to really keep a beat.  As I watched him at this concert, it struck me just how far he had come.  He has not only learned how to play one instrument, he has learned to play two by the end of the year!  I'm so proud of him.  (And props to his teacher!  Teaching that many students to play such a wide range of instruments is no easy feat.  Seriously. That woman deserves a raise.  Or a box of chocolate, since we all know teachers are under paid. Can I get an Amen?!)

And now on to gymnastics...

My little gymnast.  She's awesome!  This year she was at the gym for over two hours every week (and in the dance studio for an hour and a half each week.  She's in amazing shape!)  Her final assessments happened over the course of two days.  Day one was for gymnastics.  That means she went through a series of exercises on the equipment such as the bars and the balance beam.  Her biggest achievement this year was learning to do a one armed  round off dismount on the balance beam.  She still needs a spot but it's still impressive.  I'm pretty sure that if I attempted that move I would crack my head open!  Day two was for tumbling.  This was the first year that she was in a tumbling specific class.  She wasn't a big fan.  She definitely prefers the bars and the beam.  However, I can see the benefits of the class in her overall performance.  She's stronger and tumbling helped with her flexibility.  I'm so proud of this girl.  She's a born athlete.


Dance and Art classes at the studio also ended....

The girls have danced at Masterpiece for the last five years.  This is the first year that they were in the same class.  It was fun for me to watch them dance together.  They both have such different strengths and weaknesses. And they have grown so much in the last five years.  Sicily started at the studio when she was two!  Both of them have developed into lovely young ladies in our time at the studio. They are both beautiful dancers.  We owe that to their teacher of the last five years, Jackie.  She is so great with them and loves them like they're her own.  I love her for that.

This was my strongest teaching year yet.  Each year I feel like I figure out how to do this whole teaching thing a little bit more.  This year I took a completely different approach with my older students.  I spent the first half of the year introducing them to the technical elements of art, such as color theory, composition, line, and form.  The second half of the year I introduced them to conceptual art and encouraged them to develop their own unique concepts and styles.  The art work out of that class reflects the change.  Their art is edgy, unique, and conceptually intelligent.  They amazed me!  I will definitely be trying this approach again.  I loved watching their mind's work.  Children are able to see so much more in the world than we give them credit for.  The piece above is my boy's.  It' s a deconstructed clock representing the decay of time.  The pieces get smaller and more deformed as your eye moves across the piece.  I love it!  I think it's brilliant.  He's a great artist....

but more on that later.  I'll save the big show for tomorrow.  As a teaser though I'll say this:  It was our best show yet.  We took the theme and the artistry to a whole new level!