The artist

What you see below is Franny's "Frog art".  During the nine months she spent in her Frog class, she was very enthusiastic about her art.  Although there are exceptions, the approach to art at Franny's preschool is "self expression".  There are few guidelines--they aren't instructed to create anything based on a theme.  Rather, they focus on using alternate methods to facilitate their art--they paint with crumpled paper, rollers, marbles; they pick their paint or other medium and create according to their mood and imagination.  At this age, the result is a lot of pictures that appear to lack any kind of focus.  But, in reality, they all mean something to Franny and she can tell you exactly what they represent and she is very proud of all of them.

A good friend introduced me to this great idea to control the art overload that inevitably occurs during those early school years:  put them all a wall and take a picture of your child with their art, as well as additional pictures of individual paintings.  Then, sadly dispose of the masterpieces, saving only a few for her Frog scrapbook.  And, while in theory, this is perfect for my constant need for organization and minimization of unnecessary hoarding, it has proven difficult to completely follow through on.   While in my mind I think a picture of dried apples glued to blue construction paper is as good as the original (and who knows when I'd ever look at it again, anyway) I still find it hard to part with.  Her current collection stands about a foot high.  Maybe once it reaches 18 inches I'll finally finish the task.