November 26, 2014
October 5, 2014
Final show of Dr. Dolittle happened this afternoon, fifth performance. We spent almost everyday of our last month at this theater. The John Lumber Center for the Performing arts at the College of Lake County are home away from home. It became an incredible adventure for Arianna. As I reflect on her journey from auditioning to showtime, I am in awe of how much learning happened just by being a part of life. For one, Arianna read the book Dr. Dolittle, a known classic that would never have been on her radar before this show. She compared the book to the screen play. She understood the characters. She learned the language of England english as compared to American english. She also witnessed day to day set building. She literally watched as each day the set went from a vision Director Tom described to a cloth with painted trees to a hanging curtain with three layers. She watch the transformation of stool become rock and a cart become a living room on wheels that spins around into circus tents. She learned about the lighting and music prompts that make the show flow from one scene to the next. She also learned about the job of the stage manager, and the backstage crew that communicates details to each other and the assistant director through a headset. She now has a deep realization that without these devoted people live theater could never be. She loved seeing how the costume designers measured and made clothes to fit, and was fascinated by the animal masks created. She learned how much we need audiences to pretend with us by moving like the animals we portray on the stage. How their laughter feeds performers, and how sometimes crowd members yell out inappropriately.
Arianna also had to be part of the “meet and greet” the college shows do with the audience. This is a bit out of her comfort zone, but she did it with elegance and grace. That is a lot of learning! No lesson plan needed for it all happened without a script. From audition to final bow, she absorbed lessons from the stage, for “All the world is a stage...”
Posted by Zahra Lightway. Posted In : Patty's Blog
November 26, 2014
September 27, 2014
My Arianna was cast in Dr. Dolittle at our local community college. She auditioned, she got a call back. She got disappointed with a duel part casting as a little monkey and a circus ball walker (yes she can walk on a ball), but no speaking lines. So, she went the first week a bit sad, and I was sad for her. As the days ticked along, and the rehearsals became longer I thought she would start complaining about the amount of time she was giving to this production. I watched a...
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Posted by Patty Kendziora-Sprenger. Posted In : Patty's Blog
November 26, 2014
September 16, 2014
Two weeks into this schooling without school project, and WOW the change is our home is Amazing. My kids opened their own cake business. They are making gluten free and dairy free cakes from scratch. They have made an excellent flourless chocolate cake, perfected carrot cake muffins, and are designing a chocolate cream filled cake. They have bought their own ingredients, they have done the math to calculate the cost of each ingredient. They have researched why organic ingre...
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Posted by Patty Kendziora-Sprenger. Posted In : Patty's Blog
November 26, 2014
September 3, 2014
The day after Labor Day is a good start school day according to my husband. The dilemma I have is not the start date. It is the approach. I just realized that we are two different pages of the homeschool book. Yes, we did buy a bunch of books for the kids this year. Yes, I did show them these books, explain the books, make them binders. Yes, even I am having trouble of completely letting go of all I know about school--textbooks, review questions, math, spelling and grammar. ...
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Posted by Patty Kendziora-Sprenger. Posted In : Patty's Blog
November 26, 2014
August 23, 2014
It’s 8:30 am, raining hard, the sky is grey and dreary outside, and we are all asleep. It also happens to be the first day of public school in this town. We slept through the dragging of kids out of bed. We slept through the rush of getting dressed in new school clothes. We slept through the hurried half eaten breakfast, the missing shoe, the craziness of racing to the bus stop. As the kids woke up to their own rhythm, and meandered downstairs, we ate a healthy, happy breakf...
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Posted by Patty Kendziora-Sprenger. Posted In : Patty's Blog
November 26, 2014
August 12, 2014
School Registration Day. The day kids wait for in August to find out who their teacher will be this school year. The day they call all their friends to see who is sharing this classroom experience with them for the next nine months. The non-stop phone ringing (or texting) that is fun and exciting or disappointing depending on weather your BFF is in your class.
Well our phone is not buzzing. Our house is quietly subdue. The kids are feeling left out of this summer right of pa...
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Posted by Patty Kendziora-Sprenger. Posted In : Patty's Blog
August 8, 2014
At the end of the school year, obnoxious amount of stuff come home. The lockers are emptied, the desks are cleaned, supplies are collected and schoolwork is shoved into bags to be brought home. The stacks of notebooks, graded worksheet and journals, that come in fill the entire counter space and tabletops. I sift through it all. Amongst that stuff this year I found two things written by my son. One was a letter in his creative writing journal, the other was his final exit poem from his 5th-6...
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Posted by Patty Kendziora-Sprenger. Posted In : Patty's Blog
July 27, 2014
Do you remember the first time you you stopped feeling totally free? I do...I was in kindergarten (mind you, this was a long time ago, but I still remember it vividly!) We had to to pass all these skills and do them in a certain way, or we would not be allowed to move on to first grade. I was very nervous and stressed...what if I wanted to tie my shoe a different way...nope...had to do it a certain way! Why was this losing my freedom...because I was being pushed to do something in a certai... Continue reading...
Posted by Terry Damlos. Posted In : Education
June 19, 2014
So world I am homeschooling my kids this year. Take that in. REACT.
You are crazy. That is a lot of work. Why? I could never do that. Are you sure? Maybe you’ll change your mind. Aren’t you worried about socialization? My husband thinks that is a bad idea.
How do you know you can do it? What makes you qualified to teach? I wish I could do that.
Why are you pulling them both out? I wish we had better schools. You should talk to the school. You can do it because you are a hippie. You are br...
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Posted by Patty Kendziora-Sprenger. Posted In : Patty's Blog
