I Can Fly!

And Halloween finally arrived. Finally, finally and finally, could she go to school in her Tinkerbell costume. We met knights, witches, ninja fighters and magicians on the road, and also a few Tinkerbells, but nobody was as much Tinkerbell as this one. Could it be the bright green? Hard to miss.

And the party lasted all the way until 6:30 P.M. By that time the carefully hand-sewn wings (by Mom, yes yes), were pretty much crumpled up, and when - on the way back home from the party - she fell asleep in the car, there wasn't much wing on Tinkerbell left. Never mind. She could fly anyway.

Tinkerbell and her friend, the Fairy.

Her friend the Knight and the Princess

"I made this picture because I am an artist."

"This is a girl dancing on a dance part. Around her are balloons. She is wearing a cherry dress. I made this picture because I am an artist."

This is a collection of balls; "Some of the balls are blind and the others can see because they have eyes."

Rain and Girls on Index Cards

A girl on an index card, fished out from the bottom of her book bag. She’s not at home right now, so I cannot ask her the finer details of it, but we’re all into hearts these days.
(Update; it’s Hana herself, and the red heart is a ribbon, not a heart!)

And now that the rainy season has started, she wanted rain boots and an umbrella. We did not find rain boots (other than the ones that sell for $50 and up, which I refuse to pay for a pair of rubber shoes), so we’ll wait for opa & oma from Holland to bring her a pair (from the Hema), but we did find her an umbrella, to match with her blue rain coat.

The Letter

We received a long letter from her opa and oma in Holland. Hana wanted me to read it to her, and once we were done, she said; “I’m going to write a letter back. This is the result. This year she will learn how to read and write, and she can’t wait.

She made the envelop too.

I like the multitude of staples. It is going to snag behind every possible nut and bolt in whatever machine they have for transporting and sorting mail. We’ll see.

Paris is About Love

“Paris is about love, right?” asks Hana this morning.

Right. Paris is about love. What brought on this Train of Thought? No idea. Maybe the fact that she remembered that her brother ‘has a love’.
“But no longer,” I replied.
“Why not?” she wanted to know.
“I don’t know. That’s what happens.”

And so she drew ‘Paris is About Love’.

The heart above the table is obviously cracked, but not yet broken, “because there are pieces of scotch tape. It’s taped together again.” Not very promising for the remainder of that romance, but whatever. The boyfriend (left side) and the girl friend (right side) are sharing a plate of spaghetti, and they will “suck the spaghetti until they kiss each other.” Spaghetti with meat balls, I think.
I think she’s seen that scene in ‘The Lady and the Tramp.’

And to complete the setting, there is the Eiffel Tower, to make sure that you understand that this is about Paris, and Paris is about love.

Photography

Hana has always been interested in my digital camera, like every child, and I usually delete her images. But today I figured that this is an art form as well, so here are some of her photographs of this week. Her gold fish feature, as well as her cousin and her foot.

Inspired

Hana spent the afternoon at the house of a friend of hers. The father of the child is an avid art collector, and there is literally not one spot in the house that is empty. He’s got paintings on every single wall, from top to bottom. A lot of it is local work, but apart from some European stuff, he also has a lot of Iraqi, Syrian and Palestinian works. Most of it is modern, or semi-modern.
Hana was greatly inspired by it all. Here are some results.
The girl in question was drawn, together with portraits of the other members of the family, in pencil. They were very rudimentary sketches, with some colors around it, but the eyes clearly showed it was Hana’s friend. And so Hana also made one of her friend.
This seems like a bit of modern art, which they had plenty of hanging around. It could of course also be based on her Dr. Seuss books.A bit of mosaic in chalk, cut out in an irregular shape.
This one is based on her birds. She’s got two parakeets, but they started breeding and now we have three. This green one is the mother.

Tinkerbell

The Tinkerbell costume is ready, Now being on Halloween!!

The Ultimate Tinkerbell

Halloween is on its way, and Hana has decided she will be Tinkerbell. She wants to be the ‘ultimate Tinkerbell’, and so does not want a bought costume. It has to be homemade, with lots of different colors of green. She has even picked the design. Mom, however, has not time, nor skill, to fabricate her a costume. Luckily, Hana’s grandmother is a fashion designer, and so today she went to the workshop to pick out the fabric for the costume, and to have her measurements taken. So stay tuned for the ‘ultimate Tinkerbell’; Thursday we are going for our first fitting.

Randomn Work

A drawing of Hana's new 'old' dog. We picked it up from the side of the road, so it is not the new puppy she has been lobbying for, but it still is a very tiny dog, who seems to be willing to go along with Hana's game of 'playing circus', so I guess she is willing to overlook the fact that he is not really 'new'.

Hana's impersonation of Marie Antoinette (inspried by this summer's visit to Versaille); just one of the many uses for an old mop. Fire-breathing dragons (no idea what inspired her)

And Halloween is on its way.

A bracelet she made for me.

the 'Artsy' Summer of 2008

This summer was an ‘artsy’ summer for Ms. Hana. She went on an extensive visit to the Louvre in Paris, saw the Eiffeltower, and the Versaille Palace, and was greatly inspired by all the statues and paintings and stories about dead kings that had their heads chopped off.

Hana at the Louvre

Hana at the Louvre, in front of a painting of a 'guy that lost two wars and then they send him away'.

Hana at Versaille with a crown

The unfortunate king and his family that sadly had their heads chopped of in 1793. The king has a rather stern look on his face. The Eiffeltower.
She also visited a great many old churches, and saw hundreds and hundreds of statues and paintings and church windows of the virgin Mary with Jesus, and so she even tried some ‘religious’ art. Here is a church window, with colored glass.

There is much more, and I’ll try and document it some more.

Rainbow Rock

"Look Mom, a rainbow rock!"

We'll be back in September with more art work of Hana.

The Dentist

Hana is not just afraid of the dentist, she is terrified, mortified. When told that a dentist visit was imminent, you could find here at all moments of the day in the bathroom frantically brushing her teeth. Totday was D-Day. She cried and argued, and decided she'd be the last in the chair. But into the chair she went.

Clean bill, no cavities. "Oof, that was easy."

Until next year.

Some Arabic Art Work

School’s out, and a massive amount of art work came home today. MASSIVE! It is so much, there is no way I am going to document it all. It all came in this big fat file with this drawing on top; a girl with a balloon and some flowers. I am very pleased with the border she drew. At had her name too (more on that below). Her shoes have these little crossed bands on them. Exactly like the shoes (glittery gold with a purple butterfly and crossed bands) she picked out. A lot comes from her Arabic classes. Her Arabic is poor, as she hears little of it at home, and she has a distinct accent when pronouncing Arabic words, unlike her brother, who is fluent. But the teacher is making lots of effort to get this one into becoming a native speaker, through art.
The first set is obviously about emotions.The Lebanese flag. I like the notes she wrote on it. She can distinguish between written letters and numbers in both English and Arabic, and she recognizes French when it is spoken, but she also knows about signs for music. Practising her Arabic numerals

Then there are animals. I know about the giraffe, I heard her practice the word ‘giraffe’ in Arabic; sjeraffa. Obviously she reads about spiders and snakes and mice as well in Arabic. I cannot read the Arabic titles above the pictures. Maybe you can.A rooster and a hen with a nest of eggs, about to hatch (see the cracked lines?). Both birds have this fleshy thing hanging from their beaks. I am amazed at the details she puts into some of her pictures.This is her name in Arabic. Being the illiterate that I am, I never really got into writing my daughter’s name in Arabic. I assumed it was all the same. But just as there is a difference between Hana, Hanna and Hannah (not in sound though), there are differences in how you pronounce Hana in Arabic.So while the Arabic teacher assumed for two years that her name was Hanah, it was in fact, Hana. Yes, you see the difference? I don’t either. But the grandmother did. It is a question of emphasis, it seems. She picked up Hana from school one day, and Hana had her Arabic file with her, with her name incorrectly written (according to grandmother). So we changed all that. And now it is Hana, even in Arabic.

Here is the family. She sees the housekeeper as part of the family, which is probably a good thing, as the lady is with us just about the whole day.

Hana as a fairy (she says).

I told you it was a lot. And there was more. But that's enough. Probably no more postings until after the summer, which will be in September. Next year she is starting to learn how to write, her teacher told her. We'll probably be posting books by the end of next year.