Many many months ago I wrote a grant for a reading garden for Finn's school. We won a $5000 award from Lowe's, yay! Unfortunately, everything that goes through LAUSD is a little slow and it is only now that we are starting to see it all come together. We were ready to paint the mural last Sunday but we got rained out. Well, we finally did it! We painted the mural today. We started out the morning with a go away rain dance.
We made these special hats yesterday. Thanks Scarlett, Jack, Finn, Felix and Bell for making these great anti-rain hats. It was a little overcast this morning but they did the trick!
We forgot to take a before picture of the wall we painted, but the bungalow next door gives you an idea of what it looked like. There is A LOT of this orange/brown color at Finn's school.
Thank you to Patrick, Bell, Steve, Jordan, and Lonnie for pre-painting the wall blue for us! That was a big help today.
Here is Ms. Gretchen our awesome creative leader chalking in all the outlines for us. We were all just standing around, sort of staring in fright at the blue wall and then Gretchen got there and took charge. Mom, she is a lot like you. We were debating getting a projector and other means of putting the winning design on the wall when she just grabbed a piece of chalk and started sketching it all out free-form.
Yay Gretchen thank you! We really couldn't have done it without you.
Patrick painting in the sun!
Some of our little helpers. The kids had a lot of fun painting, but they also loved having free rein of their school on the weekend.
The kids painted in all the grass for us at the bottom of the mural.
Even Jack sat still for a little while to help.
Ezekiel was my little helper all day. He was awesome and added in lots of great details.
Slowly, but surely, here it is coming together.
I have to admit, that I was partial to Finn's design for the mural. He did an Octopus' Garden theme with an Octopus reading books on all of its arms to various sea creatures who were gathered around. He even showed a bit of copy writing skill, writing, "I'd like to
read under the sea." Awwww. All bias aside, the winning mural design did seem like it was somehow meant to be. The centerpiece of the winner's design was a kid sitting on a stack of books. Gretchen immediately decided to use this very inconveniently placed electronics box as a 3D version of the stack of books. Perfect!
Voila! Here it is finished.
Here are our little helpers taking a break.
Here are the kids' hand print flowers. The two together on the far-right hand side are Finn's and Jack's and I think the little pink one at the top left is Scarlett's.
Almost finished...
This really was a great project to be involved with. So many parents, staff, kids and community members came together to make it happen. I think of it as our valentine to the school.
And to one little kid who I especially adore.
And to other future Glenfeliz kids yet to come. A lifetime of happy reading to all of you!
Many many months ago I wrote a grant for a reading garden for Finn's school. We won a $5000 award from Lowe's, yay! Unfortunately, everything that goes through LAUSD is a little slow and it is only now that we are starting to see it all come together. We were ready to paint the mural last Sunday but we got rained out. Well, we finally did it! We painted the mural today. We started out the morning with a go away rain dance.
We made these special hats yesterday. Thanks Scarlett, Jack, Finn, Felix and Bell for making these great anti-rain hats. It was a little overcast this morning but they did the trick!
We forgot to take a before picture of the wall we painted, but the bungalow next door gives you an idea of what it looked like. There is A LOT of this orange/brown color at Finn's school.
Thank you to Patrick, Bell, Steve, Jordan, and Lonnie for pre-painting the wall blue for us! That was a big help today.
Here is Ms. Gretchen our awesome creative leader chalking in all the outlines for us. We were all just standing around, sort of staring in fright at the blue wall and then Gretchen got there and took charge. Mom, she is a lot like you. We were debating getting a projector and other means of putting the winning design on the wall when she just grabbed a piece of chalk and started sketching it all out free-form.
Yay Gretchen thank you! We really couldn't have done it without you.
Patrick painting in the sun!
Some of our little helpers. The kids had a lot of fun painting, but they also loved having free rein of their school on the weekend.
The kids painted in all the grass for us at the bottom of the mural.
Even Jack sat still for a little while to help.
Ezekiel was my little helper all day. He was awesome and added in lots of great details.
Slowly, but surely, here it is coming together.
I have to admit, that I was partial to Finn's design for the mural. He did an Octopus' Garden theme with an Octopus reading books on all of its arms to various sea creatures who were gathered around. He even showed a bit of copy writing skill, writing, "I'd like to read under the sea." Awwww. All bias aside, the winning mural design did seem like it was somehow meant to be. The centerpiece of the winner's design was a kid sitting on a stack of books. Gretchen immediately decided to use this very inconveniently placed electronics box as a 3D version of the stack of books. Perfect!
Voila! Here it is finished.
Here are our little helpers taking a break.
Here are the kids' hand print flowers. The two together on the far-right hand side are Finn's and Jack's and I think the little pink one at the top left is Scarlett's.
Almost finished...
This really was a great project to be involved with. So many parents, staff, kids and community members came together to make it happen. I think of it as our valentine to the school.
And to one little kid who I especially adore.
And to other future Glenfeliz kids yet to come. A lifetime of happy reading to all of you!
3 comments:
So great to see the transformation, Em. You really should receive a trophy for all the effort you guys put into this. It's a lovely mural and you should be very proud.
Love,
Amy
Wonderful! Amazing the difference in warmth.
Glad you didn't tempt a Ringo lawsuit...
Sorry we're so late on the comments. What an amazing job you guys did. It's beautiful and the work you put in just to be ABLE to do it was a Herculean feat! Congrats on a job impeccably done.
Love,
Adrienne and Algis
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