A Message From JoAnne

Hello Preschool Families! As you may have noticed, we are making movies this spring. Each day of the week will be represented by a short film to be unveiled at our end-of-the-year family night. For my three days, we'll be producing "There Was an Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe" (Tuesday), "Urban Arts Had a Farm" (Thursday) and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" (Friday). We're making props, sets, costumes, puppets. . .everything we need for some top-rate productions!

There seems to be so few weeks left all of a sudden (and so much fun art still to try!). We'll fill in the rest of our weeks with more spring art (animals, plants, wind and rain). As part of our exploration of spring, I'd like to make a wind sculpture out of paper-covered dry-cleaner hangers. On a recent trip to Washington D.C., I saw an interesting sculpture made out of hangers at an art museum on the National Mall. I appreciated it for the reasons art museum patrons are supposed to, but my strongest reaction was: I could try this with preschoolers! So, if you have any paper-covered wire hangers around, or any connections at an area dry cleaner, we could use at least 15 - I've got two already. We'll paint on the paper and then connect them into a hanging sculpture that moves in a breeze.

I'm also interested in collecting large empty oatmeal cartons and plastic tubs with lids (the kind jumbo packs of pretzels and animal crackers come in). I'll use them this summer to make drums in our Shake It! Make It! camp.

When the weather improves (think warm thoughts everyone) I'd love to get us outside to make kites, sidewalk chalk and paint in the courtyard. Any day now. . . .

JoAnne