we’ve been watching the calendar.  today we checked the computer.   we looked at maps.  and….

punxsutawney phil saw his shadow!

so we took some crafty little puppets (groundhog printable glued on old cracker and cereal boxes with a craft stick hot glued on…thank you ms hanna for your factory-like work in getting them ALL cut out!), colored them brown (or any other color of choice) and took them out for a shadow hunt!

we made holes from tires and climbed on in too.  we were the groundhogs!

we did read a factoid that phil’s weather predictions have only been right 39% of the time.

so, if you don’t want 6 more weeks of winter, then you might be in luck!

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we also did some indoor shadow dancing play, but i was too involved to take any photos…tomorrow i hope!

it was ten years ago today that a fire broke out in our church basement also known as preschool classroom, kitchen, storage, library.

i was still on maternity leave with micah, reeling from a previous miscarriage and generally feeling like i couldn’t do it all.  then there was the fire.  it was quite a journey.  with a lot of gratitude, i’ll walk into work today.  ten years later. smiling and stronger and sure of community.

we have our own photos to share and our own stories to tell, but while those are waiting, here is what our local newspaper has to show:

(click on the photo above)

thank you, ms wendy!

hee hee hee…one of our very own preschool baby dolls was on the news!

my friend, christy, is the director of the SIDS network of kansas and they needed a doll for one of their news segments.

much to our delight (and confusion!), we watched our doll on the news!  we looked at the calendar to try to understand better that the doll was picked up on monday morning, driven to wichita, went to the news studio for the recording session, driven back to newton, and dropped off at our preschool on tuesday morning.

you can watch it too:

(click on the above photo)

we got a double m out of a project this week by using old editions of the mennonite magazine for cutting and gluing into capital M shapes!

there were varying techniques.

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we practiced m writing along with pointy and bumpy mountain line shapes.

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we cut and taped map strips into map mountains.

we have more maps waiting to be used for our field trip headbands!  thank you, friends and families for the donations!

we read the story mouse paint (after a two day mystery of not being able to find it…then discovering it in our tub of books to give away…yikes!  we almost lost it for good!)

we mixed colors just like in the book.  one day i did it in jars hidden in a brown bag.  one day i did it in ziplock bags tucked in my lap.  and then one day everyone got their own ziplock bag.  super exciting stuff!

we used our mixed secondary colors and some more primary colors to cover a big piece of paper.  there were 5 plastic rats that we chose to call “mice” that painted with us. : )  we used brushes, hands, and mice to get the paint on the paper.

as usual, paint aprons are optional.  and i witnessed again that some kids who wore aprons went home messier than those who didn’t!  same with me.  this is the season for “pulling up your sleeves past your elbows” because one thing that most kids don’t like are paint saturated sleeves for the rest of the day.  one year we found little sponge like paint marks all over the classroom and determined it was from the edge of someone’s sleeve.   it was kind of cute.

and a movie, not for those prone to motion sickness, to share more mouse paint joy:

not heard here is a little song we sing to the tune of “if you’re happy and you know it…”

when you mix red and yellow you get orange
when you mix red and yellow you get orange
when you mix red and yellow a new color you will see
when you mix red and yellow you get orange

(repeat with other color combos including…when you mix all the colors you get brown!)

oh, mouse painting…what messy fun you were.

well, this was a spinning good time!

and it was also good to wash this thing up to use for our lettuce again at home.

there were all sorts of paint techniques…dots, pools, stripes…here we have ms. erin’s star design…

(it helped to get on a chair in order to get a little better leverage)

ta-da!  then it’s off to the cubbies to dry…

i’m so grateful that i could correct the movie. there is nothing like hearing the voice of dr. king, described as “big and loud and angry and serious and nice and like santa” by our preschoolers.

so now, enjoy our tribute to dr. king, complete with portions of his “i have a dream” speech.

a little movie tribute to dr. king.

i’m trying to figure out why his speech isn’t playing…so an update may come.

happy birthday, rev dr martin luther king jr.

we’ve had a meaningful couple of days already this week.

i got misty eyed once when we watched a mlk video on youtube…just seeing 12 little faces all gaping mouthed and wide eyed listening to voice of a man.

one of the preschoolers said, “he sounds angry.”  then we went back to our book and recalled that there were times when he WAS angry!   “yeah!  i would be too!  yeah, they were so mean.  yeah, it wasn’t fair.  yeah, if they did that now they’d be in jail.”

good stuff, i tell you.

we’re coming up with laws that we think dr. king would be glad we have.

the complete list to come.