The Artful Parent book has been out for two weeks now! Thanks to all you wonderful, artful parents and teachers who have bought a copy! It has been on best seller lists and hot new release lists in a couple of different categories on Amazon, which is super exciting. It's also had some amazing reviews, both on Amazon as well as on sites participating in the blog tour. I'm feeling very lucky and thankful.
I also have some bookstore and other events coming up and wanted to share that info with you:
I just returned from a brief trip to Philadelphia and the Type A Advanced Conference. This conference was aimed at people who have been blogging for over three years and was full of great take away information. I took lots of notes and can't wait to sit down and review them.
As awesome as the conference was, though, you can see from this photo what grabbed my attention even more.
The entire garden popped into bloom while I was away at my Grandma's.
Coming home to see color everywhere was incredible. The dogwoods and redbud, the tulips and daffodils, the creeping phlox and lilac, the candytuft and ajuga... The everything! Everywhere I looked there were flowers in bloom.
There's a quote I love by Ralph Waldo Emerson—"The earth laughs in flowers."
Perhaps it's more appropriate for summer, but after a longer-than-usual winter, including snows during our spring break, this floral abundance seems so joyful.
We're back with another drawing with kids post! It's been a while and I apologize. We've actually done all three drawing exercises from lesson 2 (drawing from graphics) over the past month and this lion drawing is the first of them.
For those who are joining in for the first time, my 7 year old and I are following the drawing lessons outlined in Mona Brookes' popular book, Drawing with Children.
My mom flew back from Florida with me. The girls were SO excited to see her. Since she lives in Oregon, visits are infrequent and highly anticipated.
She brought some seashells for the girls as a little gift from Florida. We found them nestled between sand and rock on the beach between Sanibel and Captiva islands. Nothing special shells that were gathered quickly in between waves.
I'm experimenting here... I'm in Florida visiting my grandmother and mother and thought I'd see if I can post to the blog from my e-mail. I've read that it's possible, so here goes...
This photo was taken of a lunchtime doodle at Trader's, a restaurant on Sanibel. Between our many games of Bali, Royalty, Scrabble, Bananagrams, Wordy, and Famous Man, we've been going out for lunch to my Grandma's favorite places. And most, surprisingly enough (since the crowd here is over 70 rather than under 10), have paper and crayons ready to use the second you sit down. I love it. And think we need to do this more at the restaurants at home.
Yesterday was an exciting day around here! As the official release day for my book, it was full of all kinds of fun. Lots of great Amazon reviews to read (Thank you, thank you!), an after school trip to our fave local bookstore, flowers, notes of congrats...
The highlight was taking the girls to Malaprops Bookstore in search of "our book." We had to ask for help finding it—it wasn't on the shelves with the parenting books but rather up in the front window.*
Today is an exciting day! Not only is it the
official release date for my book (Woohoo!!) but also 20 Moms, which I’m
honored to be a member of, is hosting our very first blog loop. I am delighted to
have Deborah of Teach Preschool contributing today. You probably know her as the early childhood education expert who shares her ideas so generously with teachers and parents around the world.
While Deborah is
here, I’m over at Anna’s blog, The Imagination Tree, sharing a fun quilt stained glass art activity that we did recently. (While there, see where Anna is
posting today...and keep following the loop until you make it back here!)
Building and Creating with Curves by Deborah J. Stewart of Teach Preschool
It is such a pleasure to join you all here on the Artful Parent and I must also add, it has been quite a challenge to find something even remotely comparable to the beautiful posts Jean shares with you on a regular basis. I wanted to share something that would compliment Jean's approach to early learning and artful experiences and so after much thought, I decided to share our exploration of building and creating with curves...
Here's a video of Daphne painting and singing at the easel, taken this morning. It was such a happy painting experience, I had to try to capture it on video! (Pretty sure this is the first video I've shared here...)
