Labors of love

Danette Goulet

COSTA MESA -- Wearing once-white men’s button-down shirts backward as

smocks and clutching big, thick, well-used paintbrushes, young artists

painted portraits of their mothers Monday.

“I’m going to make her have a purple shirt and a green skirt because

she really has a green skirt,” said Grace Clever, 5. “She wore it on St.

Patrick’s Day.”

It was one of four art stations set up in Paulette Montandon’s

kindergarten class at Adams Elementary School in Costa Mesa that

exercised students’ motor skills and incorporated writing skills.

Before students headed to the various projects, Montandon explained

and demonstrated how to do each project and explained why they were doing

it.

First, she demonstrated how to make a cow out of construction paper.

Besides the cutting and pasting, children learned about cows.

The next station helped children make clever little Mother’s Day

cards, which meant writing.

Kindergarten has really changed because, first of all, these kids all

knew how to spell the words they needed -- “my,” “love,” “for” and “you.”

They also knew how to write them.

The third station was a surprise for mothers, and the fourth was the

painting.

For the painting, Montandon explained that no one painting would look

the same because mothers all looked different. She asked students to

think of what their moms looked like, including eye color and hair color.

“My mother has a lot of brown and a little gray,” one student offered.

Then it was off to create masterpieces.

Of the four kindergarten students assigned to the painting center,

Grace was, by far, the most meticulous. She worked long after the others

had finished to make her painting perfect.

“Isao, I don’t think your mother has red eyes,” Montandon offered,

giving Isao Kisino’s painting a skeptical look. “What color eyes does she

have?”

Next week, students will paint their fathers. Regardless of any

imperfections, Montandon said, the parents always love the paintings

students draw of them.

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot education

writer Danette Goulet visits a campus within the Newport-Mesa Unified

School District and writes about her experience.