Progress!
   I spent the last week doing a ton of projects with the girls. The girls painted the clay pieces that they worked on the week before.  I have never seen April as excited to work with art, usually she is very talkitive, which granted she still was... All that she was talking about was how much she loves clay. "when will we start the next clay project?" was asked while we were cleaning up Tuesday morning. Kamari also seemed to enjoy the work, she especially enjoyed mixing colors. It was fun seeing how excited they got when they mixed two colors together. Mixing white and red to create pink seemed to evoke the same expression as my sister opening presents on Christmas. (Pink happens to be their school color). Denee on the other hand, I do not think enjoyed working with clay at all. I dont think she liked the feeling of the clay drying on her hands. For the most part she rolled a bunch of balls out of the clay. But once we got to painting this Tuesday she seemed to be back in the zone, creating designs and colors with the paint to decorate all the balls that she had created.

   We also did a project painting wooden book covers last Thursday. Denee painted her book covers Blue and Maize! While she was working her speech therapist came in to see their work and asked if understood her color choice, and if it was on purpose. Denee said yes, and that it was influenced by knowing that I went to school at U of M and that the colors reminded her of working with me. My plan is to return the books at the end of the semester for the girls to use as sketch books in their free time.

   We also worked on the Dragon project I spoke about last week. The girls had a lot of trouble working on this project though, they wanted to draw the whole dragon, not just the body. In the end April and Kamari seemed to work off eachother making almost the same dragon. Denee did a fun pattern that resembles her other work that she has done during class. I am going to mail the pieces to Toko this weekend so that she can use them in the Dragon that she is currently creating.

   Lastly the girls worked with water color. I felt that I should bring it back since Denee loved it so much the first time we did it. (Happy Valentines Day) The girls drew a lot of hearts in their water color. But Kamari painted a lot of rainbows working with all the colors that she could in each of her pictures.
(Over all including driving this took about 8 hours.)

Bookbinding Work:
   I also worked at Hollanders twice this week, getting feedback on my work and cutting out board for the book I'm creating of Denee's work. As well as cutting holes for the tunnel book, and getting paper (6.5 hours)
   I also bound the three mini books that I am giving to the girls at the end of the semester (5 hours)


For the rest of this week and next I am going to work on finalizing my ideas for the girls books. I am going to start binding the final tunnel book. Also I am going to start printing out the pieces for the book I'm creating of Denee's book. The girls have winter break, so I'm going to spend extra time working on the books. I'm also going to try and find ideas at the library for new art projects to teach the girls.

Newest book and some other things

Over the past week and a half I have completed my first tunnel book. It has a few mistakes in it, but I'm glad I figured them out in the small book instead of a final piece. Overall it took about 12 hours this week and a few hours the week before.

I also created three books for the girls to paint on that I plan on binding in a Coptic style and giving to them at the end of the semester. I had to drill holes in all of them before they can start painting, as well as cut down paper for the center of each book. This probably took around 3.5 hours.

Lastly regarding books I cut out 32 boards for a book to put denee's work in. The pieces are all 5"x5" and I plan on using a wire edge binding to combined them all in the end.

I also went to Detroit twice this week. The first time I went we spent the class period playing around with water color paint. I have never seen Denee so excited to work with any other media as she did with paint, which is why I plan to use a lot more painting in the upcoming weeks.
We also worked with clay this past Thursday. It was a ton of fun and I am excited to see how they turn out after the girls paint them. April seemed to really love the clay, as well as a sticky style clay called model magic that felt like a sticky play dough to work with.

Tomorrow I am bringing supplies for a Dragon project. Peter has a friend, Toko, who is working on a project where tons of people create parts of a body of a dragon and then they will all be put together to create one piece in the end. The girls and I are going to spend the class period create pieces to help out. In the end Toko plans to pass this dragon artwork to the orphanage "Tohoku Rainbow House". Toko is hoping that this project will help bring in donations for the orphanage as well.

Once the clay is dry we will paint the pieces that they created last week. And start working on painting the book covers that I cut out to let them work on a medium other then paper.