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)

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.

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…

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

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.

probably not the last.

flashback to 2009:

good times when scissors are available at all times.

as requested, here are a couple of our favorite printables.  you should be able to click on them and download them for yourself.

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the first printable we use for cutting practice, then gluing into a capital M shape, or on to random art projects.  we also used these images to add dr. king’s face to some of our people shaped blocks.

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this is the one we used last year with watercolor paints while listening to jack johnson, of course.

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this last printable is from years ago by now…we offer lots of shades of brown crayons, mirrors and photos of dr. king.

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again, thank you for your support.

let’s celebrate – and live! – the dream.

j week meant “j is for jellyfish (and other creatures that live under water)” week.

we used things other than our hands and paintbrushes to turn a lot of paper different shades of blue and purple…all with a bit of glitter (which reminded us of the rainbow fish book we read!).

the dish scrubbers were a favorite along with our paint wands from lakeshore.

then there was a lot of cutting and gluing to make paper jellyfish.

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we i ended up making plastic bag jellyfish…cut strips half way up a plastic bag, stuff another plastic bag in that one, then tie a knot to create a “body” and jellyfish tentacles.

we went “jellyfishing” through the puppet stage window by feeling around and grabbing one.

and then with the help of classical music, did a little dancing with the jellyfish.  they floated amazingly well!

one day we made jellyfish in bottles with more of the plastic bags cut into tinier strips put into blue water.

jellyfish in puzzles were discovered.

and this was the week some children got really interested in cursive writing.

we do a lot of tracing when it’s cursive work!

whew!  what a week that was!