The Ivy Log: December 2018

For me, December 2018 began with a phone call at about 3am. It was time for my friend Danielle to have her baby girl and she was coming early! I got to be the one to crash on their couch for a few hours to stay with their son Logan and the dogs while she and Daren went to the hospital.

It was Saturday and we had planned to go to Foothills Mall to see Ramona's artwork on display. Once Logan and my kids were all up and dressed, we all made the outing together.

Little two-year-old Wylie was walking around with his hands in his pockets like a big boy.

At some point we went back to Logan's to let the dogs out. The kids had fun playing in his backyard before we left.

Decorating cookies was another past time that day

The best news: Baby London arrived safe, sound, and adorable. Welcome, little one!

It was about this time that Wylie showed a strong interest in changing burnt-out light bulbs. If he saw one wasn't working, he was relentless about reminding us. One night, we had finally heard enough and decided to change several. Wylie was ecstatic!

One project I took on last school year was teaching a handful of music lessons to the half-day kindergarten class at Bethke. Because of overcrowding and (presumably) funding issues, children enrolled in half-day kindergarten were not offered any specials instruction like art, music, technology, or P.E. that year. Only children whose families paid tuition for full-day kindergarten were able to participate in those classes. As a music teacher, I felt that this was supremely unfortunate (in addition to being somewhat discriminatory according to the ideals of public education), so I contacted the half-day teacher and obtained permission to do a lesson with her kids about once a month. I was already doing music lessons for the two neighborhood preschools, so I just adapted those lessons for a larger, slightly more mature crowd. The most daunting task was to have them each create their own composition on staff paper by drawing notes, then interpret them on my own and plug them into notation software. Then I brought in an electric keyboard and performed each composition at the beginning of December.

Seeing the kids' reactions made it all worth it. They really do need a little something more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic to inspire their love of learning and creativity.

Preschool Paula:

Last year, the girls were really into watching an Australian mermaid show on Netflix. Wylie loved getting right up to the screen during the end credits and pretend he was swimming in the water.

I love this picture of Paula and Wylie chowing down on sugar cookies:

Paula next to a giving tree at the bank:

Forest took the girls to the Timnath Tree Lighting Festival one Friday night. They admired the lights from a carriage ride, got their faces painted, and made crafts.

We spent most of a Saturday last December building a backdrop for Ramona's fourth grade wax museum project. She was supposed to choose a historical figure from Colorado's history, dress up as her, and give a speech about her life in front of a small set that could fit on her desk at school. She chose the writer Helen Hunt Jackson, and decided to have bookshelf as her backdrop. It was time to put some trash-to-art skills to work as we gathered cardboard, empty snack boxes, styrofoam, packing paper, and lots of paint to create a lightweight bookshelf with fake books and a foam picture frame.

Since our dining table was overtaken by this project, we got Subway sandwiches and had a picnic on the floor that evening for dinner.

Ramona at the fourth grade wax museum:

Izzy Sheridan, Ramona, Isabel Shostedt

A memorable event that month: Mika accidentally turned Ramona's idiom homework into a saddle for her toy horse, thinking it was scratch paper. Once we were able to salvage the paper and get it turned in on time, I had to laugh.