by the time spring rolls around, we have a lot of kids interested in making letter shapes.

warning:  spoiler alert!  current preschool mamas who haven’t yet opened that brown lunch sack with a rainbow ribbon, you might want to come back after sunday. : )

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using roughly cut circles from my fabric stash, preschoolers chose 6 different sizes of circles.

then we used some of these donated stars that already had pins and magnets on the back.  and with me asking for the biggest circle, then the next biggest, then the next biggest and hot glue between each circle, the mother’s day flower was made!  the final touch was mama’s favorite colored pom pom.

if i still had a preschooler, i’d wear it with pride.

we made some treasure, followed some clues and found that treasure box several times in the week.  crazy good fun.

thank you, families, for adding to our treasure boxes all week.

well, first you need to make rules.  with much discussion, we agreed on which were okay pirate actions for preschool and which were not.  red meant no, green meant yes.

you also need to eat pirate snacks.  and laugh at the word “booty.”  and laugh harder that you are eating “pirate booty.”

and you collect any striped dress up clothes you can find.

and you say thank you for a set of bamboo trays which look really “piratey.”

and you find a teacher who is happy to walk himself into a local restaurant and ask for 50 pirate hats.

and then you dress up, snarl your lip and say a lot of “aaaaaaarghs” and you are a pirate!!!

now go find that treasure!  x marks the spot!!!

well, why haven’t we done THIS before?!?!?

what a hit.  when paper is crumpled and then flattened and then painted on with coffee (freshly made or leftover), a wonderfully old looking piece of paper is created!  it is a little more impressive when an actual coffee cup is used and even more impressive yet when the coffee is still hot and even MORE impressive yet when your teachers are drinking out of matching coffee cups!

the next day the papers were dry and ready to draw on.

it was also nice to have a “compass rose artist” in the room one day.

later in the week we added pre-drawn treasure maps from on line to crumple and paint.

hanging them to dry with fans was helpful.

stay tuned to see if those maps helped us find our treasure!  AAAAARGH!!!