Saturday, April 16, 2011

Art Class & Egg Hunts

I'm exhausted. I feel awful because I feel like I should have more energy for my 2 year old but right now, I just want to sit on the couch and do absolutely nothing.
Granted, today was a busy day.
This morning we went to hunt Easter Eggs in October weather. Seriously, it was freezing outside. Everyone had winter coats on. I was waiting for someone to take us to a corn maze instead of actually hunting for Easter Eggs. For the first time, I was jealous of the Dad who was dressed in the warm Easter Bunny costume.
This year, TG seemed to be more understanding of the concept and even told me she would look for a green egg. She wasn't as fast as most kids and only found two eggs but I don't mind. No need to make this a competition and besides, my child was perfectly happy with two eggs and one of them was green.
Inside one egg, she found a rainbow ball like toy and in the other a green 'Happy Easter' stamp. She was pretty psyched and asked me to show her how the stamp worked at home.
Afterwards, we skipped the bake sale (TG and I aren't sweets people.) and instead went to decorate wooden eggs. We spent a good 30 minutes decorating her egg. In the freezing cold. With winds pulling in from the Hudson River.
Later, I asked if she wanted to paint her face and she kindly declined. I guess this kid is like me. I wasn't a bit face painting person either.
She didn't get up and personal with the Easter Bunny but she did say she wanted to give the Easter Bunny and egg. From a far, she waved at EB and I took that as a step up from our usual encounters with character costumes.
We headed home and had just enough time for lunch and a potty break before we headed out to our first art class.
She absolutely loved it. There were 4 projects for the day. I did one of the 4 for her but that's expected of a 3 year old. Jeannine the teacher said it's common between projects for 2-3 year olds to run around to let out some steam. She was right. All the kids ran around like soda bottles that were shaken prior to opening.
I liked that each class has a theme and concepts. Today's theme was pirates and began with a pirate story. This lead to activities that allowed our toddler to practice using scissors. Yes, our daughter has used scissors before. For the first time, she was able to cut felt. The cuts were small and she isn't at a point where she could cut a traced item but it was great to see her carefully put her thumb in the holes of the scissors and attempt to cut. If you are wondering, yes, she used her left hand.
She also learned that you can mix colors to make other colors.
She also did her thing by assisting with clean up.
Jeannine was surprised to see how clean TG liked to be. She was blown away though when she went crazy with the finger paints. I didn't even want to go into how she painted herself green like the Hulk just two days before.
TG loves to finger paint. It's getting glitter and anything else on her body that she's opposed of.
In the end she didn't want to leave. I head to explain that next week we'd be back and next week's theme was Easter eggs and bunny rabbits.
She seemed to love the other class artwork. She pointed to the rainbow and the mural of seahorses and asked if she could do it too?
I think this going to be a fun class for her and me.