we joined in on tinkerlab’s creative challenge…there are oodles of egg-celent ideas over there!

our post-easter-pre-earth-day plans include making another BIG cooperative collage like we did with ellie the elephant a couple of years ago:

then we painted them with white and black paint.

we used leftover paint to paint paper and recall the concept of a “math sentence”

then with painted egg cartons, a big piece of cardboard, silver and black duct tape, black crayons, gray crayons and scissors….we made ellie the elephant!  since her initial photo was taken, more paint and crayon has been added.  she still stands guard over the block corner (to watch her baby elephants in the animal tub, of course).

 what’s all that yarn she’s stuck in, you ask?

a giant spider’s web that she went out to play in one day!

: : : : : :

thank you, tinkerlab, for the motivation to firm up the plans!

our preschool is a ministry of our church, a member of mennonite church usa. while we don’t teach any specific theology or doctrine, we celebrate the birth of christ at christmas and the resurrection of christ at easter. we know families come from all different faith backgrounds and practices and we respect that. so when easter comes around, i am honored to sit and ask the questions. the children provide input, i work hard to guide and watch expressions. it is clear when some kids are hearing some things for the first time. it is clear when some kids are a bit unnerved. those are moments i break in with clarifying statements and the assurance that i will let their families know about these conversations so they can talk more.

somewhat similar to a conversation with some already graduated children from last year, here are a few favorite moments from our “what we know about easter” conversations that we do brainstorming style…my writing could hardly keep up:

“jesus is god.”
“jesus is not god. god is god!”
“no, jesus is god and god is jesus.”
“wait. there is another one too.”

“bunnies are like ninjas because they hop around.”

“it was a sad day when jesus died. but when he got out of his cage, it was happy.”

“they found out jesus was gone when they were out looking for easter eggs.”

“i thought god killed jesus on the cross. yeah, he did.”
“no he didn’t!”
“yeah, i think he did.”
“no! god LIKES jesus.”

“the easter bunny knows more because of his brown fur.”

“jesus died and then rose from the dead.”
“jesus is a zombie?!?!?”
{eyes look to me…i ask, “well, what do zombies do?”}
“zombies walk with their arms out and head to the side.”
“zombies hurt people and are mean.”
“jesus can’t be a zombie. he walked normal.”
“he was nice.”
“jesus wasn’t even mad at the people who hurt him.”

“the easter bunny is real.”
“no, the easter bunny is fake.”
“no, the easter bunny is real.”
“no, the easter bunny is fake.”
“no, the easter bunny is real.”
“okay, maybe the easter bunny isn’t fake.”

“people die when they are old and they don’t come back.”
“people die when they are 99 or 100.”
“i know someone who died at 88.”
“now people just go to heaven.”
“jesus must have been magical.”

“people were mad at jesus like they were mad at dr. king.”
“they shot jesus?”
“no. there weren’t guns.”
“he had cuts and sores and didn’t get to eat or drink.”
“dr. king had injuries too.”
“but they let him drink before he died.”

“easter is the happiest day.”
“the easter bunny found jesus first.”
“that’s why we get to go on egg hunts.”
“yeah, we have to practice looking for jesus.”

i always learn something new.
may the promise of new life bring you joy.
happy easter.

well, there were silly things like when we drank glue (really it was cream put in a cleaned out glue bottle), ate dirt (really it was pudding and oreos), saw a friend who grew his hair from short and blond to long and black (really it was a wig), shared our sneaky snacks with pastor renee, went out the church door (instead of our preschool door)…….but i didn’t get pictures of those moments.  i did of a few other moments, though.

first off, the pudding in the paint bottle.

i demonstrate how we’re going to finger paint with it and in the middle of my demonstrations i lick my finger.  oh, the surprise!

it took some kids a while to warm up to the idea of trusting that it really was pudding.

it didn’t take some long at all.

:: :: :: ::

then we added to our pudding snack with grilled cheese brought by a friend.

he waited until everyone was served and had a chance to take a bite, then explained that it was pound cake and frosting!

yum yum yum.

:: :: ::

and then, a show and tell surprise like no other (in all my 17 years!):

we knew right away from the show and tell friend that it was just chocolate, but that didn’t make it less silly!  smelling a diaper that looked poopy!?!?  trust me, some friends passed it right by.

as silly as it sounds, it seems like we bonded during this experience.

and sometimes it was enough to just look.  : )

sweet silly stuff.  happy april fool’s!

:: :: :: ::

when it was V week, we talked up the color “violet” and made some replicas of the grape hyacinth.  the days included trips around the church yard to find this pretty violet colored flower.

one project was using old vegetables (celery!) to make prints.  to make one bunch go farther, i cut the stalks into smaller pieces and masking taped them together.  they lasted for days.

what you may not be able to tell here is that we had white paint and dark purple paint for the children to mix and stamp from.

there was some careful stamping to make the blooms stick right on the crayon-drawn stems like the real flowers.

:: :: ::

another project was using old painted paper we had (my, how i much prefer to use painted paper instead of colored construction paper!) to make the flowers.  as you might imagine, we looked at the work of eric carle first (and how handy for V week that the caterpillar was VERY hungry).

then there was cutting and gluing and name writing in the treasured permanent markers.

there was even one preK friend who determined himself to be official name writer.  thankfully, he had many willing friends.

spring has sprung indeed and the flowers remind us so!

well, we’ll be a couple of days late, but we’ll still do some of these tried and true pranks:

2008:

a little glue-as-milk-bowl-of-cheerios started the day.

then a fake ponytail and huge paperclip earrings to preschool

2009:

there were bologna and peas waiting at the play-doh table (funny).

the letter of the week turned back to A (funny).

the calendar and the music said it was christmas again (funny).

the paint was edible (but i didn’t tell them that at first. instead i pretended the only funny thing was that we were going to finger paint. then i suddenly licked the paint! oh, wide eyes).

there were fake moustaches (funny)…really these are just strips of fake fur with a roll of masking tape.

but the best joke of all was the coffee cream in the cleaned out glue container (funny!!!).

a.w.e.s.o.m.e.

the best april fool’s joke yet.

i washed and filled a glue bottle with cream…then added it to my coffee while preschoolers were watching…hee hee hee.

2010:

jello in a cup with a straw.  sneaky.

then i turned our school snack silly.

want some french fries?

oh, they don’t look cooked well enough?

well, that’s because they are apples peeled and cut to look like french fries and caramel dyed red.

2011:

well, friends, it’s nice that corey brought us grilled cheese sandwiches for snack today.  i’m sorry that all our cups are missing so i guess you’ll just have to have glue to drink.  april fools!  it’s milk-NOT glue!

and april fools again…it’s CAKE AND FROSTING not GRILLED CHEESE!

there were quite a few refills…and quite a few drooping eyelids as they drank bottle style for the first time at preschool.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

hey, friends, we’re going to do some finger painting for group time today.  we’ll use these plates because they are nice and sturdy.  it sure is a nice blue color, isn’t it?  let me check something…..(then i dipped my finger in the paint and tasted it…oh WIDE eyes!)

april fool’s!  it’s pudding NOT paint!

the perfect place for letter writing, scribble making, yummy finger painting.

:: :: :: :: ::

get ready, get set, we’ll do some more tricks this week!  and it seems that the best ones get repeated.  but that’s fun too (as i learned tonight at home from my youngest daughter…oops).

after a shaving cream/food coloring/water demonstration of clouds, we made our own.

we used paper cups, flattened them, slathered them with white glue, pressed them on cotton balls, did the other side, and look at that:  a little cloud.  i hot glued a piece of yarn between the flattened cup ahead of time.

i’m always heart warmed by children who turn inanimate objects into playmates.  this friend is taking care of her little cloud baby:

“you want to go oooooover the wall?  it’s okay, i’ll save you!”

then there were a whole bunch of little cloud babies. : )

so, after coming in from a long outdoor time, the preschoolers were hot. during indoor circle time one little friend took off his shirt. no one noticed at first, it wasn’t silly, etc so we teachers ignored it as well. a little while later when i noticed some gigging about it, i tried to normalize things without calling the shirtless boy out. so i said things like when you’re a preschooler you might take your shirt off if you’re hot, if you see someone at preschool with their shirt off that’s what’s going on, when you’re at kindergarten you can’t take off your shirt, but preschool some things are different, etc.

the children started chiming in about their dads taking shirts off when mowing grass, sleeping with shirts off, etc and it seemed that the shirtless boy was feeling comfortable. then about 6 others started feeling comfortable.

we had over half a dozen preschoolers-boys and girls-topless. i tried to act normal and continue our conversation about vocanoes.

but visions of a visitor coming in, fears that some of you are hoping to instill a sense of modesty greater than that, and generally feeling like i came to close to a line we shouldn’t cross, i paused circle time to “concentrate on cooling off” so we could get dressed and be ready to go back outside.

sure enough, when i opened my eyes from “cool off” time, all shirts/dresses were going back on.

so. if your preschooler was at school thursday afternoon, they’ll know about this. if your preschooler comes on other days, they might hear second-hand about this “shirts coming off at preschool” stuff.

and that was the day.

let me know if you have questions.

thanks,

humbly and gratefully yours,

kristin