Playing the holiday away

Ellie has two and a half weeks of school holiday for winter break. Last week, she really enjoyed her music workshop taught by the music teacher at school. It was three hours each morning from Tuesday to Friday, and the group gave a little performance on Friday. I uploaded it to YouTube to share with you (because it was incredibly cute), but I received an almost instant notification from YouTube that my video would be banned because the song playing in the background ("Shake a Tail Feather") was copyrighted material. I was a bit stunned since I don't illegally burn movies or music, so it just hadn't occurred to me that the poor audio quality of a song seven kids were dancing to would set off the copyright alarms. Yikes. So, alas, I cannot share that video with you, however much I would like to. Robyn (the music teacher) taught them all a little choreographed dance routine, and Ellie has been thrilled to discover I have the song on my iPod. She has done her best to teach the dance to Stephanie, and the two of them have been dancing to that song at least 10 times a day since!

At the beginning of this week, I sat down with Ellie and asked her what she would like to do with the rest of her holiday. We made a list. The number one request was art every day. She insisted we needed to do THREE art projects per day, but I whittled her down to one. While Ellie is a definite rules girl, Stephanie is more Jackson Pollack freestyle. Paint is applied to (or with) her hands, her face, her belly... Glue is not restricted to paper but is interesting on furniture. Markers can enliven our boring wooden table and chairs. You get the idea. It's all in the name of creativity, but it does deter this mama from art projects that are fun enough to interest either of them. I think some of our projects may be tackled during Stephanie's nap time this week. On our art project list are bean collage, fold over/symmetry paintings, nature sketching, make small accordion books, nature treasure collage, weaving felt strips, salt painting, draw and color "me", mixed media collage, papier mache, and balsa wood sculptures. Over the past three days, we've actually only done one art project, much to my surprise, because she's been in mood for other things at obvious art times (or we've had playmates over who weren't interested).

The activity each day list has been just as interesting: fancy lady tea party, nature treasure walk, build an indoor fort, playdates (with five friends listed!), visit the Cuddly Animal Farm, play at the indoor playground, and swimming at the indoor pool. Thus far, we've checked off the indoor playground (though Ellie sees no need to make that a one-time thing) and three playdates. (To be honest, I could skip many of the playdates. I know she misses her friends from school, but it's hard to coordinate with nap times and schedules and preferred activities.) Counting the weekend, she has six days left, so we're going to make the most of them!