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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

this feels like a moment as a mom when you forget to record a first word, step, or a cute phrase.  when all those sweet things happen and aren’t recorded.  i’m finding photo after photo of fun stuff from days gone by.  enjoy the trip back down memory lane…

like the time we made green eggs and ham.

we sat in the kitchen, cracked the eggs, turned them green, cooked up the ham, and then mr matt and i tag teamed the cooking/handwashing/table setting dance…and we had green eggs and ham!

happy birthday, dr. suess!

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updated:  these kids loved the eggs…our secret ingredients along with the salt and pepper were a dash of dill and onion powder.  mmmmmmmm!