Rebekah Jane Creative

What a great paint night last evening at the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Fredericton and Oromocto office in downtown Fredericton! A HUGE thank you to Isaac's Way Restaurant for supporting youth participation in the arts. Young people in our mentoring program learned how much fun it is to paint gum ball machines! Local artist Rebekah Jane Creative gave us many artistic tips as she led us through the steps. It was fun to see how young and older all added their own personal touches! Thank you to all the Bigs, Littles and families who joined in and to Board member and Big Brother Geoff Durham for organizing such a picture perfect evening! 🩵

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Last week at Mornings with Munchkins was "All Abour Our Bodies"

Book: "Cells, an owners handbook" by Carolyn Fisher

Songs: heads shoulders knees and toes, hands in, shake sillies, I love my body

Activities: we had a paper on the wall the size of the kids so I got them to stand against it to trace them each out in a different colour, then we went to each table to find all the organs and then bones and identified where they are on our bodies and what they do and stuck them to our drawing on the wall!
We had a light table with xrays on it, a magnet puzzle with all the body parts, muscles, bones, teeth, heart and organs.
We had little cards that sd laminated to draw with dry erase markers on.
The favorite activity was definitely brushing the alligators teeth!

We had 2 visitors this week,
Leah, a nurse practitioner who brought in her stethoscope and a few other tools and did a little check up on the kids and helped us learn more about our bodies with our bone and organ cut outs!
Laura, a dental hygienist who brought in lots of cool "teeth" to show us, she taught us how to brush our teeth properly (fun fact, when kids can tie their own shoes, they then have the dexterity/fine motor skills developed enough to brush their own teeth!) We got to see how eggs react to acid and floride and learn about how different foods effect our teeth (no bad foods, just different after care for them!)

We loved having our guest visitors! Thanks ladies!

Sensory bin: a body puzzle and a bunch of eye balls 👀

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Week 3 of Mornings with Munchkins was the first week of fall so we 'fell' right in 🍂

Books: Fall Mixed Up by Bob Raczka & Little Acorn by Books Igloo

Activities:
Apple Investigation! 🍎 We learned all about apples; do they float? how tall and wide are our apples? How many colours do we see? What do they taste like?
Sunflower dissection! 🌻 I brought in two HUGE sunflowers to class and let the kids have fun playing and inspecting it.. they asked so many questions and learning about the sunflower (and the little bugs we found a long the way).
My little scientists did such a great job investigating!
Child lead activity was cutting! I wanted to cut a squash I had brought in (it was no good to eat because some critter had gotten to it, so they saw me cutting off the bad parts and wanted to have a go too, so we learned about knife safety *a practical life skill* in a controlled and safe environment. We noticed how much harder it was to cut apples than it was the squash and noticed that it's easier to cut when the item is flat face down.

Art: we made our own little Acorn life cycle and talked about other life cycles too *based off the little Acorn book*. we also made some beautiful fall 3D art trees!

Sensory bin: fall theme! So many things, felt (with numbers) and fake leaves, wax coated leaves (I made with my after school kids about 2 years ago), real apples, real and wooden acorns, little leaf gems.

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Week 2 at Mornings with Munchkins; zones of regulation, intro to emotions/feelings

Books : Colour Monster by Anna Llenas & My Magic Breath by Alison Taylor and Nick Ortner

Sensory bin : colour monster theme sorting, included containers with colour monsters, red, green, blue and yellow pompoms and small pieces of pipe cleaners.

Activities : yoga, affirmation station (which was an addition to the class by my friend and the class teacher last year, Bobbi ❤️), introducing the zones into our morning "how are you feeling today" sharing time, magic breath.

Art : coloring with pastels, making magic wands (for "my magic breath") with beads and pipe cleaners,

Theme table (which I need a better name for this space but that's what I can come up with atm) : book; colour monster, light table with "how am I feeling today" "how can I calm this feeling"

I've decided I'm going to start (trying) to post what I'm doing in my preschool class each week

We just finished week 3 and I'm getting in the groove of it now. I've given each week a theme
1. Introductions and name recognition (which I won't be sharing anything from for privacy reasons)
2. Emotions & Feeling (intro)
3. Autumn
4. Next week is "all about bodies!" Which I'm really excited about, we even have some guests coming in to share!

So I'll try to share it about once a week and one day I'll reopen my TPT or Etsy account(s) to sell/share all the things I'm doing with you!

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[ Part 2/2 ]

So why I decided to share this now.

* Because I wanted to
(That should be the only reason but there are more lol)
* I turn 30 in a few days and I simply don't want to continue feeling like I'm hiding apart of myself anymore (not that I was or anyone has to "come out" to be validated in any way -this is just something I felt needed to be done for my process.)
* When I see others share, I feel so seen and not alone, I want to do that for others too.
* Because I don't know, I'm tired of people thinking I'm straight lol
* Because there is a huge stigma around being Bi that is not only present in general but also still prevalent even within the LGBTQ2S+ community as well.
Which includes but not limited to - Bi men being dismissed as "just gay", Bi women allowed but only for the men's gaze, Bi being a "stopping point to coming out as gay/lesbian, etc"
* Because bis*xual individuals have a very high percentage of being s*xually victimized
* Because with everything happening with our school system policies right now I feel so scared for kids who were like me and find school to be a safe place. Because we all deserve to have the freedom to choose and figure out who we are without being *forced* into things. Because we deserve to come out or not if we want. EVERYONE deserve proper s*xual education that is inclusive to pleasure, safety, accommodations to LGBTQ2S+ and disability

Anyway. I didn't even need a reason or to validate your feelings for sharing MY experience but the reason I felt like I "had" to is because society made me feel like I needed to, that my experience didn't matter, but it does and these thoughts and reasons are apart of that experience too.

Learn more about being bis*xual / q***r by following other bi and q***r people

2 books I highly recommend:

Greedy; notes from a bis*xual who wants too much by
We Have Always Been Here; a q***r Muslim memoir by .habib

*xual ***rlove

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Yesterday was bis*xual visibility day

[ Part 1/2 ]

I have never hid this part of myself, however, I also never announced it and almost never have times where my s*xuality was questioned.
I have debated sharing this part of myself more openly for ..well ever.. but many stigmas have held me back
*I've only ever been visibility in heteronormative relationships
*what difference does it make of 'who' I am attracted to if I'm in a relationship?
*am I really hiding if I am open to share but just never have the chance?
*this is just 'showing off' something that only effects me
*it's just about s*x and attraction which is private (it's not but I'll get to that)
*people will assume or question me about my personal life that does not concern them in any way, nor would they have questioned me when they assumed I was straight.
*maybe women might feel weird to befriend /stay friends me (although all my close friends already know and know that it does not change anything about our friendship)
And countless more harmful things I told myself to keep to myself. ***none of these are actuate, but are real feelings I had and probably things you might think as you read this***

Being bis*xual is apart of my identity, my experience.
I have always loved this part of myself, I knew what to call my attraction since I was a young teen, though I felt it since I was younger than I knew how to identify the words.

Sharing this publicly doesn't change anything about me at all, since this is always who I've been, nothing changes, except for the simple fact that I've finally allowed myself to share this openly.

Part 2 in next post.

*xual

I'm feeling a pull to share, be open again in this space, but in a different capacity.

👋 hi, it has been a while, eh?
I've been "away" since I closed my business "doors". I knew I wanted this space for something some day, but I wasn't sure where it would end up leading me to. I could never just "pick something"

But something from the Barbie movie has been sticking with me
"You don't have to be anything"
And s**t eh, why was that so enlightening? The multipassionalite in me just 🤯

So I've changed my name from "art" to "CREATIVE" to encompasses this change.
I'm not "anything" so I can be anything I need to be in the moment.

I'll share more. But I just wanted to say hello again. Welcome back the new "not anything", everything, Rebekah.

home 🏡

Image of a white paper with black pen marks of various types of folk art trees and a house. Rebekahs hand holds a sharpie pen in her hand by the paper, another pen lay beside and a full cup of coffee all sit on the table.