kids

Happy Valentine’s Day!

For my colleagues today, I thought it would be fun to make a few Valentines. I wasn’t sure what to do this year, and then I saw a simple idea on one of the Martha Stewart pages here.

After gathering some lollypops and some colored paper, I thought it would be brilliant to cut some heart shapes out of the paper using both the scissors and a hole punch. I then glued all of the shapes together and hole punched the main larger hearts. Sliding the heart “petals” up the stem of the lollypop and securing on the reverse side with tape (being careful to NOT tape the paper on the lolly) I think they made some cute flowers.

Next time, I think I’ll try making some with words on them (like fun Valentine’s Day slogans or something), or maybe adding some other features like ribbons. Otherwise, I would say this is a great craft for the kids too!

On January 3, 2010, a friend of mine let me know that her daughter was going to be a part of an ice skating performance at Alexanderplatz. Since I have a camera, and I’d mentioned previously I’d love to come see M perform, I was asked if I could bring the camera and take a few shots of the kids and the show for them since, prior to the actual event, the parents are running around trying to get everyone ready and most only have small cameras. Despite the cold and frozen fingers (I forgot my gloves and it was well below zero F), I must say that I was totally impressed by these youngsters – ages 4 and up – some of whom practice 6 days a week, two hours or more a day (yes, even the under 10 year olds). They have put in a lot of hard work and absolutely left me surprised and amazed at how well they do.

A few photos are below – with more in my flickr set here.

First – the Spins…. Spins are difficult, but apparently one of the “easier” things to master as other than the first class, all ages seemed to have some variant:

Then there were the beautiful glides – whether it was with toes out, one leg up and straight out, or with one leg up behind the head – these were more complex (obviously) and starting with the young – and ending up with the older ones – they were just beautiful….