Da Vinci

Today was the last art class for the kindergartners. It was the Mona Lisa. Only the most famous painting in the world. No pressure.

So this time, I took in an album of 8X10s I have of the kids. I started with a brief reminder of all the different types of art we've seen. Landscape, abstract, surreal. Then I showed the pictures and asked if they believed a portrait was the most famous painting. We all have a bunch of portraits all over the house. What makes this one so special?

Part of it is the artist is perhaps the most famous painter. He didn't go to a typical school, but he was very smart. He didn't finish many projects, but the ones he did are very well known. He worked in just about every subject and did well in all of them. Even engineering.

Then I showed them a picture of his helicopter, had them guess what it was. And his tank.
I told them that neither was really made and used until some 500 years later. The kids were impressed with that.

Then I told them that people didn't know just how smart he was until here recently because people couldn't read his notebooks. I asked for a volunteer reader to read a sentence that was backwards. Then I held up a mirror and suddenly they could read it in the mirror. That was fun to see their eyes sparkle. I love the "wow" moments. So I told them that he was left handed and wrote backwards so the ink wouldn't smear.

So it was a fun little talk. How do you condense genius into 5 minutes? Next year, we'll be at the new elementary. It is the oldest building in the district, used to be the K-12, was recently the sixth grade center, but is going to be an elementary k-5 next year. We are going from the newest, most well funded building, to the oldest, possibly poorest. Yippee. So I won't be working with these moms again. They are staying at Moye. And I don't know if Schaefer has an art room, so the prep and clean up might be much harder.

But one of the moms was talking a bit afterward, and she is the room mother and I think she must be there nearly every day, but she said she was blown away by how well Abby can read. I, of course, live in something of a vacuum because I don't see the other kids to compare, but that was nice to hear. I guess when the kids want to know what something says and Mrs. Bennett is busy, they take it to Abby. Way to go, girl.

And funny quote of the day: We were in the car listening to a bible story CD, and they were talking about the apostle, Paul. Abby says, "Are they talking about Paul the O'Possum?"