Kids

The day of the Festival de Ballet finally came. There was much excitement - Guerita could hardly contain herself and bounced round the house waiting for the time to go off for hair and make-up again. This time she coped well with sitting still and chatted away with the other girls about how they were going to look like Princesas and dance beautifully on the stage.

They really did look gorgeous when they were all done up in their costumes, which were based on the Barbie Island Princess movie.

The concert itself was very entertaining - much better than I expected, actually. The costumes and choreography were so well done - very professional and I was impressed with the standard of the dancing. Not that I am in any way an expert on technique or anything, but they certainly seemed to be doing a good job, didn’t make any major mistakes and looked like they were really enjoying themselves. I must admit I enjoyed the first half of the program more than the second half. Guerita’s dance (the “Baby Ballet” class) was one of the first ones and was very sweet. There was lots of fluttering arms and “butterfly style” dancing.

The rest of part one was the bigger girl’s ballet and tap dancing. They did an excellent Irish Dance routine which I really liked. I actually did an Irish Dancing class with a few girlfriends a few years ago, for a bit of fun, and I was surprised by how much I loved doing it. I think Michael Flatley and the Lord of the Dance is a bit naff, but I am a sucker for “formation” dancing (whether its tap or ballet or whatever - I draw the line at bootscooting though) so I loved this one in particular. I much prefer that to solo dancing.

The second half was Jazz, Hip Hop, Belly Dancing and Latin Dancing, which was less to my tastes. There were lots of “Jazz Hands” and midriffs showing and inappropriate music, like the 6-8 year olds dancing to something with lyrics like “I’m sexy. I’m horny. They call you Mr Personality because you so ugly.” And I’m obviously now an old woman, because I just can’t see the point of learning Hip Hop - how hard is it point your fingers, jump up and down and stamp your feet?

Anyway, it was a good night. It was one of the end of year events that I made a decision to stay here for (for Guerita’s sake) and I am glad we did. It would have been a shame for her to miss out on this.

Today was the photo session for Guerita’s ballet concert, so full hair & make-up was required. After much worry about how I would manage to do her hair and make-up, I chickened out and arranged for someone to do it for her! I discovered that the ballet school had a hairdresser and make-up artist available to do it for anyone who wanted - and the price was only $30 total for hair and make-up for both days (the photos and the concert) which I thought was a pretty good deal. Particularly since it turned out the hair was not to be done in a bun, but ringlets and I don’t even own a curling wand. I was happy to completely avoid the embarrassment (for me and Guerita) of doing a shoddy job.

Guerita was pretty excited about the prospect of going off to have all this done, although the reality of it all was a bit more tedious. We had to wait for a while before she got started and then she was required to sit still for over an hour! Not an easy feat for her.

The novelty wore off pretty quickly

but she was very happy with the finished result (lipstick already needs touching up!)

And here’s a sneak preview of her ballet costume…

In other news I’ve also joined the Through the Lens - Digital Photography 101 Group, conducted by Hallie at The Rubber Room. This is exactly what I need right now - a bit of guidance and a little push to get me using the manual settings on my camera, and hopefully some tips on what all the buttons and dials mean. It seems to be a pretty active group so I’m looking forward to learning lots of new tricks from everyone.

The first assignment was to read the manual for your camera and take the best photo you could. I did actually read the manual when I first bought the camera and even bought a guidebook to go with it, so I kind of remembered some of the terms, but because I hadn’t put each thing into practice a lot of it was a jumble of confusing terms.

One type of photography situation I really want to work on is taking pictures when the lighting conditions aren’t perfect. When I can, I try to think about the time of day, the position of the sun etc, but the reality is that I often just pick up the camera to snap a few photos of the kids doing something interesting, so you can’t always plan each photo like a “session”.

Like today, for example where we were sitting in a room in someone’s house with the curtains drawn and the overhead light and a few lamps on. The Auto mode prompted the flash which made Guerita’s skin over-exposed and look even paler than it is, like in this photo.

I remember reading (not in the manual, on a blog I think) that in low light situations, where the automatic modes would prompt you to use the flash, it’s good to use the Av mode which lets the most amount of light in. Maybe someone will correct me here, because I know this is all related to shutter speed and the slower the speed, the more light comes into the lens, thus compensating for the lack of natural light and making up for the lack of flash. The result should look more natural than with a flash but when I’ve played around with this before the photos often still came out too dark.

Today while I sitting there for hours watching a parade of girls turning into painted dolls, I had a little play with the dials and discovered one I didn’t know was there! On my camera (Canon Rebel XTi) you move the top dial to Av mode, hold down the Av +/- button near the LCD screen and twiddling the little dial near the shoot button and you can adjust the aperture value up and down. Obviously I hadn’t read the manual that closely or I would have realised this earlier! By increasing the aperture value you decrease the shutter speed and let more light in. Here’s an example of 2 photos taken straight after each other with different aperture values (on my camera the first is at 0, the second at 2).

The data for these photos (and I still don’t understand all these numbers, but I’m learning) are:

Photo 1
Shutter speed: 1/80 sec
Aperture value: f/5.6
ISO: 1600
focal length: 55.0mm

Photo 2
Shutter speed: 1/50 sec
Aperture value: f/6.3
ISO: 1600
focal length: 55.0mm

I know the assignment said to take the best photo you can, and this obviously isn’t the best photo, but it’s going to be my entry for the first assignment, because it shows something I learnt about my camera, and I think that’s what the course is all about.

Guerita has been going to ballet classes for a year now. It’s very much “the done thing” here in Mexico for girls to go to ballet. For boys I think the norm is tai kwon do or perhaps baseball when they’re older. We tried out a few ballet schools before finding one we liked - a “Baby Ballet” class that wasn’t too serious or technical - she was only 4 when she started after all, it’s not like we were looking to start her on her ballet career or anything.

I was a little surprised when early on in the year, I got (nicely) “told off” for not putting her hair in a proper bun for the classes (complete with hair net and headband to keep her hair out of her face). Apparently the kids take the whole thing more seriously when they are dressed the part. Parents are not allowed to watch the classes, except at the designated demonstration classes, because it is too distracting for the kids and they can’t concentrate on learning ballet. This takes half the fun out of it for me - being able to giggle at the kids running around the room pretending to be ballerinas. And I can’t say I’m particularly worried about her taking ballet “seriously”! Anyway, despite these few little quirks, we are happy with the ballet school - Guerita loves it and the teachers are very nice.

Next week they have their end of year concert - not surprisingly a very involved affair with professionally made costumes, rehearsals and the like. No doubt it will be one of those kids’ concerts where for the 5 minutes your child is on stage you are in raptures and the rest of it you’re trying not to yawn. The school teaches Jazz, Tap and Hip Hop as well as ballet so it could be pretty tedious.

2 days before the concert, though, they all have a professional portrait (photo) session, individually and as a class. They have to be in full costume, hair done just so and with full stage make-up on! I am terrified at the thought of having to do Guerita’s make-up to a professional stage standard. I barely wear make-up myself, let alone know how to do proper stage make-up.

The school has provided us with instructions - they must wear very dark brown eyeshadow, eyeliner and mascara. They must have pink or red blush and bright red lipstick. I don’t even own red lipstick! I might have to go with one of my muted pinks, I think. Obviously, the colour scheme is designed with the olive skin, brown hair and brown eyed colouring of every other student, which is understandable, but it could look a bit strange on my pale little blue-eyed, blonde haired girl.

I will not be at all surprised if the teachers have to do a fix-up job when we get there!

And you know I’m going to be taking photos to show you how it turned out.

Yes, you heard that right.

Last week, Guerita had a preschool graduation. Not quite a formal cap and gown event - apparently that happens at the end of Year One!

Last year we had no idea what to expect from this end of year get-together at the school. They call it a Clasé Publica (Public Class) and it is basically a demonstration of the things they have learnt throughout the year. There’s a strong emphasis on how much English they have learnt, which is presumably more impressive to the other parents than us. Last year the kids had to pick a picture of an animal from the box and say its name in English. Funnily enough, we were the only ones who sniggered when one boy said the Equine creature he chose was called a “Hore”!

This year their main topics were countries of the world and parts of the body. They learnt about lots of different places, including Australia, where we have kangaroos and apparently eat a lot of pie! Each child was also required to give a little speech (in Spanish) on one part of the body - about 6 sentences they had memorised. Guerita’s was on bones and we spent several days practicing the sentences (with me hoping I was teaching her the correct pronunciation!).

The day before the Clasé Publica, however, Guerita came home from school with a sore tummy. She’s not the kind to get nervous at the thought of performing and she was uncharacteristically subdued so I was pretty sure she was actually sick. She showed me (and the doctor) just how sick she really was when she vomited all over the floor of the doctor’s waiting room that afternoon! The poor thing had a nasty combo of gastro and tonsillitis and her attendance at the Clasé Publica was looking dicey.

The gastro bug continued the next day and we seriously considered skipping the event, but she was determined to go. I convinced her that she should sit with me and just watch though, and not participate. Of course, when we got there she couldn’t hold herself back. She really was feeling unwell but she still managed to join in from the comfort of my lap in the audience and even to give her speech on the bones. What a trooper!

After the demonstration class is over they always have an awards ceremony. It’s one of those things where every child gets an award like “Most Creative” or ” Most Enthusiastic”. I was completely unprepared for this last year, though, and was amazed when they award Guerita the “Student of the Year” Prize! Of course, I was incredibly proud of her to do so well in her first year of proper school in a new country and in a new language, but part of me was thinking how ridiculous it was to be giving 4 year olds awards like that. In actual fact she had no idea that the award she got was any different to the others, so at least there wasn’t any pressure or expectation on her part when the awards were being handed out the other day.

This year her award was for “Most Improved Overall”. You can’t be unhappy with that, can you!

The funny thing too in these awards ceremony is that they usually give out a few awards to some of the mothers. Last year I actually got “Mother of the Year” award which was pretty amusing - I suspect it goes hand in hand with “Student of the Year”. This year my award was “Mama Detallista” which roughly translates as “Most Meticulous Mother”!! How funny - to be given an award for being anally retentive! I knew it was a valuable and highly regarded skill.

Here’s Guerita receiving her “Diploma” from her teacher and the teacher’s aide. Poor little thing - look how pale and wan she is!

She had the next 2 days off and has only just fully recovered, just in time for the last week of school, which is filled with parties!

I’m pretty sure that most of you out there with young kids, like me, have the same problem of trying to keep the mountain of artwork created by our kids under control.

When Guerita first started “drawing” and later bringing artwork home from daycare, every one was a masterpiece. I wouldn’t dream of throwing them out and I displayed them on the fridge - I even framed one!

Of course, I soon realised that

a) she was going to produce A LOT of pieces of paper,

b) they were not all going to be the next Mona Lisa, and

c) there’s no way our fridge and walls were big enough to display them!

So, I had the problem of how to keep them under control. I still want to display some and have them as keepsakes for us of her learning development, but they can’t take over the house.

I know quite a few people have posted about their solutions to this problem, including an innovative idea of scanning the pictures and uploading to Flickr, which definitely saves a lot of space. Since we’re getting close to the end of the school year over here, I thought I’d share my method with you too, in case its an idea that appeals to anyone else out there. It’s nothing ground-breaking, just a simple solution to the space problem, and hopefully a nice memento for the kids when they’re older.

Since Guerita started pre-school and has a defined school year, I have begun making a collection of her work for each year. I hope to continue doing this for each of her school years and Chiq’s when the time comes.

The first step is obviously to sort through the artwork you have and decide what to keep. When I first started culling Guerita’s art it was really hard. I felt like an awful mother throwing away anything she had made and found it really difficult to decide what made the cut. Of course, it got easier and now I am quite ruthless in what I chuck. The things I look for in deciding what stays are not just pictures that I like the look of, but also that show a significant milestone or skill she has learned (like the first time she wrote her name) or have some sort of significance (like the first picture she drew with Chiq in it). Guerita brings home all her school work for the week on Friday afternoons so there’s not just art but writing and exercises she has done. I’ll keep the ones that demonstrate her development in these areas. I tend to do this culling periodically throughout the year so its not a huge job at the end.

Note: I have found that when it comes to actually throwing the discards in the bin, its best to do this without Guerita around!! She gets terribly hurt if she sees me chucking it out and will insist that she NEEDS them all and we CAN’T POSSIBLY throw them away, but of course, she doesn’t even realise or miss them if she’s not there when I chuck them. (Best to put them in the outside bin just before collection day, in case she happens to notice them in the inside bin and fish them out!)

Once I’ve whittled down the collection the next step is to put them all in a scrapbook. I’m not talking about the “modern” version of a scrapbook with borders and journalling and fancy paper (although you could do this if you had the time and inclination) but an old-fashioned book of blank pages with the cardboard cover.

In reality you could use any type of blank page book, but the reason I like the traditional old scrapbook is because the pages are a bit larger to accommodate some of those oversized paintings, and because the cover is easy to decorate (more on that in a minute).

So, as I said, its not groundbreaking - I just stick all the bits in a scrapbook, preferably in date order (if known). I often make a note on the page of the date or anything significant about the piece of work (eg the first ever homework she did). This part of the exercise is fun to do with Guerita now that she is able to use scissors, glue and sticky tape well and this can be a good activity to do in the summer holidays (particularly here where its so hot we need lots of indoor ideas!).

Once the contents of the book are in, I then turn to the cover. I should have mentioned earlier that when I am sorting through the pieces to keep, as well as those that get stuck inside the book, I also keep a collection of pictures etc to cut up and make into a collage for the scrapbook cover. These pics tend not to be the “milestones” or favourites but just a colourful representation of her year of work. For last year’s book in the middle of the front cover I placed a 3 and a 4 that she had coloured during the year (since she was aged 3 and 4 in that year) and also her name, written by her. Once the collage is finished and stuck on. I cover the whole thing with contact.

Here’s a couple of pictures of last year’s scrapbook:

Cover

Sample page (showing some of her weekly “report cards”)

So, over to you. How do you keep your kid’s art and school work under control?