Last but not least...Summer's End Part III

We had several play dates over the course of August with these two cuties...

Ruthie and Elsie are the daughters of my cousin Jessie and my girls always love playing with them.  We had them over to our house for a little reading, drawing, cupcake making and playing.  We read a couple of books by one of our very favorite authors Mo Willems and used them as inspiration for our drawings.  We have quite a few of Mo Willems' books in our home library including...

Mo is a big fan of something called Family Draw Night where you get your family together around a big piece of paper and and take turns choosing a theme around which everyone draws.  Just look at some of the fun things here and here he and his family and friends create on these evenings.  I love this idea and so I adapted it to our play date.

I pulled out our big ream of butcher paper and taped it to our dining room table, threw some crayons in mason jars and placed them at each child's seat and voila...an easy and fun activity for the kids.

 

I was absolutely amazed at Ruthie's drawing abilities.  She sat down at the table and whipped out this dinosaur in about 5 seconds....

The girl is good!  She gets it from her Mama who has a degree in Art and who entertained Lily with her drawing of Lily and her best friend...

Mo feels that drawing is becoming a lost art with many kids who would rather be sitting in front of the tv or playing a video game.  I must admit that I am not one to just sit down and draw with my kids so this really was a fun activity.  Ever since this play date I have seen an improvement in Hannah's drawing skills and there is no more "Mommy what should I draw?"  She is more confident with using her imagination to create a drawing and picking a subject to draw...

After our little draw fest and lunch I brought out some cupcakes and sprinkles and the girls decorated and devoured their treats...

There is nothing like being able to put as many sprinkles on a cupcake as you want! 

We also spent some time with Ruthie and Elsie at the Birmingham Museum of Art for Family Day.  This is a day for families to spend together creating art, participating in a scavenger hunt through the museum galleries and looking at the Museum's permanent and traveling collections.  The Family Day that we attended was focused on the exhibit Fashioning Kimono.  The kimonos were beautiful and I wish I could show you pictures but, since much of it was on loan, visitors could not take photographs.

I did get a couple of pictures of Ruthie and Hannah in the Sculpture Garden.  I like to think they were contemplating the art historical context of each piece :) ...

We had lots of fun with these girls and hopefully tonight after supper our family is going to once again pull out the butcher paper...