Tag: Lowell

  • Sydney – Finalist in Elementary School Art Project

    Sydney – Finalist in Elementary School Art Project

    Late last year Sydney entered an art class at her elementary school. It was a very last-minute project that I refused to do with her due to her late request despite knowing about it for weeks.  However, her mom was much more understanding.

    The contest was to create art of any type, from writing a story or poem to shooting photos or even demonstrating creative dance. The only rule was to stick to the theme, “Within Reach”. So each child could interpret that however he/she wanted to.

    Brenda (the nice parent) and Sydney worked together on a short animated story. Sydney came up with the story idea and drew the graphic elements as well as the voiceover. Brenda helped pull it all together using Adobe Character Animator. Not bad at all for a rush job.

    Out of over 300 submissions, Sydney and her project were chosen to be shown at an awards night ceremony, where some of the best ones were shown and some of the winners advanced to the state level competition. Sydney was not one of the state finalists, but I think she’s already looking ahead to next years contest.

    Here’s a short video of her receiving her award, as well as the video she submitted.

     

    Click to Download 4K MP4

  • FAITH Dance Performance

    FAITH Dance Performance

    I wish I had a better recording of this, but beggars can’t be choosers. Andrew is a great dancer.

  • Andrew, Maximus and Sydney School Photos, 2017-18

    Andrew, Maximus and Sydney School Photos, 2017-18

    Today I finally had time to hang up the most recent batch of school photos. We were pretty happy with the way they all came out this year.

  • The 2016 Concert Series, Elementary Style

    The 2016 Concert Series, Elementary Style

    Let me start by saying I miss having a real and decent video camera. Both of these were shot on the iPhone as best I could, but man it was painful.

    While these both have limited value now, 20 years from now they will be priceless. This post is really a deposit into that archive.

    In the kids elementary school, each teacher decides if they want to do something special at the end of the year. Andrew’s teacher had the kids perform in a play, Sydney’s teacher had them put on a concert for the parents and Max’s teacher didn’t do any performances. Most classes don’t do anything so I guess we were lucky to get two out of three. I’m making this point so that years from now I’m not asked “Where is my video Dad? You always make videos of Sydney and Andrew but not me.”

    Blame your teacher Maximus.

    MoviePoster

    Download HD Master



    Download HD Master

  • First Grade Culture Projects

    First Grade Culture Projects

    InnovativeCulture_1

    I was so appreciative last month when the teachers let us know about the boys having a big homework project. The main idea was that each child would learn about some part of their own culture, research it and then create one of several possible projects to display their culture knowledge at a school fair (which is this Friday).

    And then, 4 weeks went by without me doing a darn thing.

    Well, it was due tomorrow so I spent about 2 hours with Maximus and Brenda sat with Andrew for about the same time and we produced two posters for the boys. Both of which I need to pickup from Kinkos at 6am tomorrow so that they have them in time for school.

    So apparently a deadline can be so far in the future that you don’t even worry about it until it’s too late.

    During the process not only did we talk about the different things that we learned, but the boys had a first hand look at some of what you can do with a computer and photoshop. For me personally that was part of my motivation to use the computer – I wanted to get them interested in being creative with it.

    Here are the results of cramming for just under 2 hours.

    AndrewTomchak-SwedishCultureCMYK_SM

    Maximus_CultureProject_POLAND_CMYK_SM