It’s supposed to snow tonight and my daughter and I are so excited.  Call us crazy, but we love the snow!  One of our favorite memories from the two years my daughter was in Ms. (Eleanor) Palm’s class was the annual holiday program where the class recited Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening, by one of our favorite Great Thinkers, Robert Frost.  After the program, the parents and kids would all go back to the classroom to create their own snowy woods scene with upside down ice cream cones, white frosting, and lots of imagination.

At home, we like to make our gingerbread kits into the house that Robert Frost might have passed on that snowy night, though perhaps his might not have had so many gumdrops.

We start with a standard gingerbread kit and add lots and lots of candy (still got some Halloween candy left over? Perfect for this!)  Then we look through the pantry and in the back of all the cupboards for anything that would make decorations.  The older and staler, the better!  We find granola makes a wonderful gravel walkways, old pretzels are great for stacks of wood, crackers are perfect for roof tiles…whatever you find can be put to use.

And then there is the “snow” – lots and lots of white frosting, piled high on the roof and dripping off as icing icicles.  Since gingerbread kits never come with enough icing for our snowy scenes, so we get an extra jar or make up a batch of royal icing (the kind that turns nice and hard).   We then create our snowy woods with upside down ice cream cones covered in lots of icing.  Add colored sprinkles and you’ve got colorful Christmas lights.Stacked marshmallows are great for snowmen, especially if they are cut around the top to take away the hard edges.  And finally, if we still think we don’t have quite enough snow, we add some chopped up shredded coconut on the ground.

Our favorite part comes after we have finished our gingerbread house.  We gather around to admire our just-finished handiwork and recite Frost’s Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening while imagining ourselves walking through those woods and coming upon our snowy candied creation.

With this in mind, my first graders and I celebrate the first Americans through the Sioux, the Iroquois, the Hopi and the Cherokee of long ago.  Our adventure begins with building four large teepees and a sacred fire created out of logs and red and orange tissue paper, around which we will be doing all of our work

As ‘Wise Woman’ and ‘She Who Knows,’ I divide the children into the four communities and we spend our morning circles learning about each other.  From the Sioux we learn to build teepees and hunt for buffalo.  We also learn about the importance of kindness and the beauty of silence.   The Hopi greet us with baskets of corn and special fruit that grows on cactus.  We make Kochina figures and paint the colors of the desert’s sunsets.

The Cherokee help us to understand the importance of sharing what we have.  We make beautiful beaded jewelry and dolls from cornhusks.  The Iroquois welcome us into their many clans.  We build miniature longhouses with popsicle sticks and make maple sugar candy.  We also string wampum (shell) beads to remember the important events in our lives.  It is precious to hear what qualifies as special moments to string up in the mind of a six and seven year old.  For example: when my daddy raked up all the leaves, I got to jump in them!  Or, when I rode my bicycle without training wheels for the first time.

After a weeklong visit with our Native American friends, we hold a Green Corn Dance celebration where we dance in a circle, plant corn and then gather it.  And we invite the parents to join us in dancing and dining!

As part of the ArtObet team, last week I went with Eleanor to a workshop she did at the National Children’s Museum focusing on the life and art of Gustav Klimt.  While the parents waited in the wings, the kids gathered for a story on Klimt and to watch the Klimt segment in the ArtObet film.

After discussing the style and inspiration of Klimt’s beautiful artwork, we got out some black paper, gold sheets, gold paint pens, and pastels and got ready to create our own Klimt-inspired “Tree of Life”.

Mother and Daughter at Workshop

Of course, the kids got really into this, but pretty soon they were joined by their moms, dads, and grandparents. And they weren’t just assisting their kids, they wanted to create their own artwork! My favorite was a father who tried to act like he was just going to sit around while his daughter worked on her art, but was fiddling around with the paper and pens nearby — it was clear he was itching to create, but held back to be a “grown up.”  With a few supplies and encouragement, he soon lost his reserve and began joyously creating what ended up being a beautiful piece of art.

Meanwhile, the under three crowd – younger brothers and sisters of kids attending the workshop – were also having a grand ol’ time.  We have so many assumptions on what young children can and can’t do, but these little ones really got into it.  With focus and determination, they created some awesome pieces. As the participants filtered out, we saw even the museum staff was getting busy creating their own masterpieces. What a joy it is to see everyone so inspired to create!

So next time your kids get out an art project, ignore the age ranges and just dive in. You might be pleasantly surprised at how quickly everyone gets into it!

Eleanor and I just did an interview for the ABC affiliate in Washington, DC.  Their wonderful anchor, Rebecca Cooper, was playing devil’s advocate asking why kids today need to learn about art.   Isn’t it more important to learn about math and science so we can compete with up-and-coming giants like China and India?

In our increasingly tech-savvy world, it seems to make sense to push science and math, but what truly makes America great?  Innovation and creative problem solving.  Envisioning something new takes creativity and an agile mind able to think in ways that others don’t.

For many years, schools throughout the world emphasized rote learning, while US schools favored critical thinking.  With standardized tests, we are increasingly moving towards rote learning, while funds for art and music are cut.  Meanwhile, many countries are moving away from rote learning as they look for ways to grow a generation of innovators.

Last week the world mourned the passing of Steve Jobs, one of the greatest innovators of our times.  In tributes, his creative genius is lauded, as is his vision, esthetic sense, and endless thinking outside the box.  He made his fortune from a tech company, but I have yet to hear anyone praise his ability to write code.  I’m sure he could, but his brilliance lay in his creativity.

Almost every young child paints and draws.  Few will become artists, but the more we encourage our children to create, the more they will learn an important lesson – that unlike rote learning where each problem has only one right answer, in creative work every problem has infinite solutions.  The bottom line: more than ever, we need to make sure our children are exposed to art, music, and other creative endeavors.

We begin our study of the Ancients with cave paintings, creating our own with paint, sand and oil pastels.  We draw our favorite animals and wonder why these first artists painted theirs.  Morning Meeting is held around a make believe campfire and we discuss and debate which continent we would walk to if land bridges were still available!

Eventually we come to understand that there were Hunters and Gatherers who liked settling down and when they did, they invented a way to keep track of their goods.  Can you imagine the excitement onday?  We pound and mold our clumps of clay into squares and with little pointed sticks, carve the oldest form of writing into them. The excitement continues as we visit ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, ancient Chinese characters and finally, the Phoenicians, who invented our original alphabet.  As the last Phoenician ship sails into history, we are ready for our ultimate A-Z adventure: learning to read and write!

So many people have helped us along the way.  There were parents who spent long afternoons managing massive quantities of wardrobe and props, teachers who helped critique early rough cuts and offer ideas for classroom use, children who acted in the film, and still more who gave feedback on what kids really like (not what adults mistakenly think they like!).  Added to them were countless media professionals who gave their time to film, edit, design, create and guide the project, and the Palisades Community Fund and DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities who believed in the project.   We are incredibly grateful to everyone who helped make Artobet a reality.

Producing a film is only the first challenge.  The next is getting it out in the world.  We know there is still a lot of work ahead, but we are once again so grateful and humbled by all the offers of support to help spread the word far and wide.  Artobet could not have been produced without the community around us, and we are certain that if it is successful, it will again be in large part because of so much kindness and generosity of those around us.

Artobet started in our community, but we hope it will now reach communities everywhere, and that many more children, parents, and teachers will join the Little Great Thinkers community through our blog and social media.  For those of you who helped make Artobet possible, we are truly grateful.  We couldn’t have done it without you.  And to those of you who are joining us now, welcome!

– Carol Pineau and Eleanor Palm