Playing at the Art Museum

On Friday we went down to the art museum and played in the Open Studio. We'd been there once, years ago, before Kate was born. (You can check out a card from the library that gives you free admission--is that cool or what?) Kate had a wonderful time painting, playing with clay, and stringing beads. Doug and I played with some ink and brayers (cool texture! I brought some home). There are a few easels set up in front of the big wall of windows. I loved the image of Kate in her cute little apron, standing at the easel painting, with the sunlight flooding in. (We'll definitely have to do that again, when I've got my camera back.) It reminded me of a phrase that my mom ran across once--"a hothouse of creativity." I think it might have been in an article on the Wyeth family. I told Doug, "This is what I want--a room with lots of windows, and a big table, and a sink." (Doug agreed that the sink was important.) Yep, that's what I want. I could spend a whole lot of time there.

They have these cases with supplies for different projects. Kate and I checked out the jewelry making case, and she quickly figured out how to string the beads on the wire. She was sitting stringing for quite a while, singing "Twinkle twinkle little star" quietly to herself. The next day she and I ran up to Artco and picked up a bead set. We got a Melissa and Doug set with brightly colored wooden beads and letters (this one). The wooden tray is cool but not really useful because there's no lid. We put the beads in a yogurt container. When we were playing with the beads together, Doug made a string with D-O-G. He showed it to Kate and asked her, "What's this word?" Kate looked at it and said "Dog!" Whoa. She can sort-of-sound-out some simple three-letter words with help (she does know all the sounds, very well), but this was pretty instantaneous, so she must have just recognized it. Either way, we were impressed.