Dwellings Part V: Houses and Chickenpox

Two more houses, all with red roofs. The green one was drawn for her teacher while she was at home with the chicken pox.
The picture tells indeed the story of Hana, who – infected by the chickenpox virus (hence the dots all over her skin) – had to stay at home, and she is obviously sad (mouth corners turned downwards) about this. Or upset.
The things flying in the air is ‘that what you told me that drinks my blood at night’. She means a mosquito, because they also cause bumps that itch. The other one is a work still in progress.

Dwellings Part IV: The Beehive and the Balcony

This is another beehive (no bees this time) and beside it is a house. What is unusual is that it has a balcony. We’re getting more detailed now. It looks like an apartment building with several floors. On top is an antenna, I assume.

Dwellings Part III: The Beehive

Another one in the series. This is a beehive (the old fashioned style, not the wooden boxes we use today). There’s bees looking out, and bees hovering in front of the hive.

Events into a Drawing; Spiders

Look how this artist translates children’s’ drawings into photographs. A wonderful idea. It shows how she translates a drawing into a photograph. The child is of course translating an image (in her mind) into a drawing. So it goes from image to drawing back to image.

I was thinking about this when I saw this drawing that Hana left on my desktop yesterday. She’s not here to explain me what the drawing is about, so I’m having to decipher her story myself.

I think this is about this weekend. We went to the mountain house this weekend. They have some massive spiders in this country. We are lucky; we did not have the tarantula type in the house, but still, we found some pretty big ones. A large one (dead) in Hana’s room. A very large (soon to be dead) one right above the front door. Another huge one on the front door (also a future dead spider). Another big fat one in a room of another house (which we could see through the window).
So here we have a spider in a box, that jumps out (‘jumping spider’ according to Hana). I think her brother has been scarig her hat hey will jump at her). The person under the table is obviously scared. .

Dwellings II; The House of a Butterfly

I am not quite sure if butterflies actually live in this type of houses. It looks more like a termite mound to me. Or an anthill. She was however quite amended; “It is a butterfly house.”
The butterfly has a sign next to his house.

Dwellings; Castles

The theme this week seems to be dwellings. These are castles. Complete with turrets and flying flags and crenellations.
The castle has a round entrance door, and side towers. I wonder where she sees this stuff.
And in a castle live, of course, a king and a queen. Or maybe a prince and a princess. Complete with crown.

On a Gecko and a Walking Stick

This morning, while walking to school, we found a big stick. As I’ve mentioned before, Hana has a fondness for sticks (and stones, and bugs, and shells and pebbles and rocks etc etc). It wasn’t really a stick, more like a branch. Thick enough to make a walking stick out of it, a cane. She knows how to make a cane, because she has seen her grandfather make a cane. He peels of the bark.

Anyway, she wanted to hold the stick all the way to school, and wanted to peel it with me and turn it into a cane at home.
I forgot the stick at work. I even forgot about the existence of that stick, until I got this drawing from her.
What does it say Hana?”
“You read it.”
I try, but I cannot figure it out. I see an ‘I Love Mom’. I see a ‘The’ and ‘Would Go U Like to’
I tell her I cannot read it. So she says;
“It says; would you like to peel the stick with me?”
Now I can read it. And it makes perfect sense.
It reads indeed: “ Would you like to peel to stick we found, with me?”
Somebody must have helped her with the writing. Her teacher, I think, Miss Linda.
I’ll get the stick from work tomorrow. If it is still there.

This morning (also, it was a busy morning) I saw a funny little pale thing lying on the carpet. Like a little tube or something. I picked it up. It was flexible, but not hollow. It had a tapered end, but the other side looked like, like, well, I don’t know what it looked like. Almost like a severed limb or so. Odd. Very odd.
And then Hana walked in, stepped on something and squeaked “Eeeww!”
As I peeled it off her foot, I noticed two little eyes, and instantly I recognized our house gecko.
It seems the cat finally had gotten hold of it. And devoured parts of it, except for the head and the tail. Inspired by this sad event, Hana drew a gecko (lizard, she calls it) and cut it out. She’s got great fine-motor skills. Definitely a girl.
Poor gecko.

A Productive Week

It’s been a productive week.
A wizard (The corner got ripped, but was pasted on again by Scotch tape)
A lady with curly hair. No idea where the ‘graduate 5’ comes from. She must have copied that from somewhere. She's got quite a pile of wood in front of her. Lovely dress, and shoes with ribbons. We bought new shoes yesterday, and she insisted on shoes with ribbons. We settled for golden shoes with purple butterflies.A cluster of houses, made for the housekeeper (and confiscated by her mom) , done in wax.A doughnut boy, inspired by a book she got this week.

Matters of the Heart

Hana is a great collector of things. All kinds of things. Shells, stones, sticks, leaves, seaweed, bottle caps and you can go on and on. Today on the beach, she was collecting shells, smooth stones, and beach glass, when she stumbled upon this rock.
“Look Mom, I found a nice stone for you. A heart.”

Love Note

I am not sure what inspired this sudden display of love and affection. Maybe because I took her fishing today? Last time we went to the beach, she was greatly intrigued by a lady-fisher. She had a wicker basket, dough, and a fishing rod, and caught one fish after another. And so yesterday, off we went to the local fishermen store, bought the tackle, fishing rod, wicker basket, and off we went. The weather had changed a bit, and we were facing wind speeds up to 6 knots, as far as I was concerned, so she didn’t catch anything.

She dictated the love note to her dad, for her mom.

We also built a teepee, in which she slept last night. Anyway, she was greatly inspired by something.

A Clown

A clown. With cross eyes, an admiral's hat and a star on his chest.What do you think the item in his left hand is (His right hand hand, left for us)? I thought it was some kind of pompom. But Hana says: “It’s a thing that goes ‘beep beep’."
So it is a horn. And the things streaming out of the horn is of course the sound. The clown squeekes the rubber ball, and the horn goes 'beep beep'. An Action Clown, so to speak.
I like the ‘Clown with Horn’ but I like her little hands more. No nail polish today.

Picture Frame

Instructions: You take an empty cornflakes box, take off the front and then cut out a window in it. There's your picture frame.

Then you draw a picture for opa & oma (Girl with Flower), stick it behind, and your present is ready.

A Spider Family and their Web

The shooting is over for the moment, and Hana can paint again near the window. She drew a spider family. At Ali’s house she saw a spider web, and was quite intrigued by it. We do not have a lot of ‘classical spider web building’ spiders here in the city, it is mainly those tarantula type of things that hide in holes and cracks.
And so she drew a spider family.

Daddy spider down at the bottom (not smiling), mommy spider above him (smiling), and baby spider making a tour to the web and back again (follow arrows). They’ve caught a bug it seems, some type of fly, and putting them into these squares. Store rooms maybe?

She takes her art very seriously. She knows now I post her art with a story, and so now she comes to me with art she wants published, and tells me the story without prompting.

The Wall is a Canvas

These are strange times. Hana has no school, since a union strike somehow ended up in a full scale battle between Hezbollah and forces loyal to the government. Yesterday was quiet, as the battles took place in other neighborhoods, but the fighting has moved this evening into our part of town. There’s gunfire on the outskirts of the neighborhood, and it seems the army is involved now as well since we hear RPG’s and heavier material.
A planned sleep-over at Leila’s had to be cancelled, much to Hana’s dismay. She’s wondering when the war will end. She doesn’t like the big bangs, but the gunfire is like firework to her, so she doesn’t mind that. And so she paints. The greater the canvas, the better she likes it, and there’s nothing better than an entire wall.

Cat

Not sure when this one was made. I am cleaning up today, no work, and so I stumbled upon this scrap of paper. He (she?) has got yellow nails, and whiskers.

Yellow

Not quite sure what this is. I see cars, high buildings, a Lebanese flag and some people.

The Shaker

Hana has seen somewhere how to make musical instruments. And so today she made a ‘shaker’. It consists of a piece of wood, and some bottle caps that she herself nailed to the wood. Originally it had some yellow buttons too, but they were removed later.

It really works, this shaker. Shake shake shake.