When Parenting is REALLY Fun

So, the FYO came home on Friday with an assignment to write about something that she is "curious about."

Due?

Monday.

In actuality, I'm not sure if it is due on Monday or not, but we decided to go for it anyway.

So, what are you curious about?

Art or babies.

Okay. Well, which one do you want to really think about?

Art.

Okay. Is there anyhthing specific about art?

Yeah! Sculpture!

Amazing. So, today we went out on a "sculpture hunt" starting in our very own backyard with a little scultpure of St. Francis. Then we moved on to this gorgeous larger sculpture also of St. Francis by Paul T. Granlund called the "Dancing Francis" located at our neighbor's church. Then down to the Minneapolis sculpture garden to look at Deborah Butterfield's "Woodrow" [the cool horse that looks like it is made out of wood and sticks], Claes Oldenburg's "Spoonbridge and Cherry", Frank Ghury's "Standing Glass Fish" 1986, and Dan Graham's "Two-way Mirror Punched Steel Hedge Labyrinth".

The search was to answer the following questions:
What is art? What is sculpture? Is sculpture art?

The FYO took snapshots of all of the sculptures and tried to describe them. Were they realistic? What were they made of? Was the size of the sculpture realistic? How did it make you feel?

The spoonbridge and cherry's enormity was, according to FYO, to emphasize the importance of eating healthy. Especially fruit.

This was a blast. I wish that I could have such hands-on learning in my own intermediate micro classroom.

The picture above was taken of the Graham piece. The FYO and I were separated by a pane of glass/two-way mirror to get that effect.