Artsy Fartsy Girl Teaches First Lesson

Paper plates, cotton balls, glue, and my oldest nephew and niece who served as my students. The lesson: paper plate Santa. I taught Michael and Evelynn the same lesson we did in Mrs. Gilchrist's third grade classroom.

Evelynn and Michael with their Santas and me in 1975

I must have really liked this project if I came home and re-taught it. I am thankful Mom snapped the picture of us three because it signifies my first teaching experience. I grew up playing school, but never dreamed of becoming a teacher. That’s an explanation for another post.

Mrs. Gilchrist was the most etiquette-filled teacher I ever had, and I'm sure she didn't care for our 8-year-old fingers making a mess with glue. Third grade was a turning point. I got glasses, I got in trouble for a fart note to classmate Todd Tollefson, and I figured out what the middle finger meant. Those stories will show up in another blog post too someday.

my paper plate Santa ~ he's 39-years-old this Christmas

  

We did not make a big deal out of Santa Claus in my childhood home. I always knew he wasn't real, and that Christmas was about Christ's birth. But for some reason, I kept the Santa I made in Mrs. Gilchrist's class. See the picture above. Found him in my memory box right beside the “I Like You” notebook cover. Read the post Thankful to be a Child of the 70s to understand my fascination with that icon.

I remembered this art project when I saw a picture of paper plate crafts on my colleague and friend Marilyn Keller's Facebook page earlier this week. She’d posted a link to the Artsy Craftsy Mom.

photo from the artsycraftsymom.com

This woman is incredible: a software analyst by day and craft-mom by night. What a combination. But I have never completely bought into the right-brain or left-brain only philosophy. A Denny Dey workshop focusing on brain research a few summers ago debunked the idea of that anyway. For more on that, click here for an easy-to-read article on the subject. It contains more brain research links inside it.

So it got me thinking, I am crafty. Kind of. 

But when I started listing how and snapping pictures of the evidence, this blog post evolved into a novel, so I cut and pasted the info into other documents to save for other posts.

Hey, cut and paste—isn't that crafty? 

What holiday crafts do you perform each year? Or do you remember a special one from your childhood? I would enjoy interacting with you in the comment section below. And remember, if the kids are getting cabin fever this season, Google the artsy craftsy mom.

 

Thankful to be a Child of the '70s

I set a milestone this week: six months of writing every day. That is 175 days. Whoop-de-do! In honor of being thankful for my progress, I rewound my eight-track tape-type memory back to the 1970s. Enjoy the nostalgia.

T is for
Tic Tac, not turkey. Sorry. Orange Tic Tacs were my third-grade favorite that I shared on the school bus with my best friend, Gail Piper, two years my senior. The sweet treat helped me get a bang out of life just like the TV ad said. Then Dynamints came out as their competition. I stayed loyal to Tic Tacs.

photo from Pinterest and the blog, Long Island 70s Kid

H is for
Holland Rusk. A toasted cracker type item that was put in a dessert. Can't find the stuff in the states, and I do not really want to purchase a dozen of them off an international website. The recipe involved, among other things, chocolate and Cool Whip and powdered sugar. A yummy family favorite.

photo from wegmans.com

A is for
autograph books, a way for kids to make other kids compliment them. Do these even exist today? Maybe it would soften the bullying issue. I do not remember kids refusing to sign anyone's. It was a gesture of kindness.

red one: from 3rd grade ~ big one: from jr. high

N is for
Nebraska—where my Omaha cousins lived. Seeing the Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom building for the first time was a big deal for a little girl who watched the show every week before rushing off to Sunday night church. I thought Marlin Perkins actually lived near Aunt Mary's family in that building. I wrote about these relatives in the July blog posts called Procrastination Pile Removed and Seven Kids and Me.

Marlin Perkins, host of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom

K is for
Kinney shoe store. We bought my soft-soled shoes for marching band from there. Since they were brown, we spray painted them black. They sold the cans right there. Kind of crazy.

photo from r-rwebdesign.com

S is for
steam rollers. You know, the electric kind. The contraption would steam up and then one would have to quickly grab a roller and shut the lid, get it wrapped into the hair, and connect it with a funky pin. In upper elementary, Mom would fix my hair in the evening, and somehow the hairdo lasted a couple days. 

picture from Pinterest

G is for
gashtel soup. It is a smashed noodle with ridges that is quite tasty. It's a Hutterite tradition to eat gashtel soup'em in cold weather, summer time weather, or anytime weather. Mom served me gashtel when everyone else ate vorscht. Gashtel, yum. Vorscht, yuck!

gashtel ~ from my freezer

I is for
Ironside, the show whose detective worked from his wheelchair. Great theme music and plot. Mom and I enjoyed watching it. Not many shows in the '70s showed the productive lives of people with disabilities. Click here to watch part of an episode.

Ironside ~ picture from Pinterest

V is for
Valerie Bertinelli in One Day at a Time. Probably the first show of its time to depict the lives of a young divorcee and her daughters. And everyone loved Schneider, the super of their apartment building that little girls like me fantasized about living in some day. Enjoy part of an episode by clinking here, and you'll see how cool the apartment was.

picture from imdb.com

I is for
the I Like You apple. Everyone but me has seemed to have forgotten this icon. I had an I Like You tablet, pencil, pin, bedspread, and even bib overalls. Here is proof below that it did exist.

cover off my notebook

N is for
newspaper from fourth grade. Looks like I was the page one editor. Check out the letter from the editor, Barbie Schwan, about overshoes and snow boots. I bet this purple printing brings back memories. For my younger readers, this was not off a colored printer.

a page from Mrs. Schneider's 4th Grade Newspaper

G is for
Gilligan's Island, my all-time favorite TV show. The seven castaways were my after school entertainment. I blogged all about them on their 50th anniversary in the post entitled A Three-Hour Tour: A Lifetime of Memories. This is one love I know I have passed on to my nieces and nephews—and even some of my greats.

picture from tv.com

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Maybe you would like to comment on some of these '70s icons or think of others to add to the list.