T-shirts and Talk

Happy Saturday!  Today, the hubs and I are pretending it's Valentine's Day.  He is making me a yummy dinner of vodka pasta and bruschetta later on tonight!  DEE-LISH.  Last night, he took me to see The Vow.  We loved it.  Now we're comparing our love to theirs.  And we've decided that I totally look like Rachel McAdams and he is practically Channing Tatum's twin!  The resemblance is uncanny!  Minus the amnesia, that is totally our story!  And people, if I woke up and didn't know that Channing Tatum was my husband and then he told me that, in fact, he was my husband, I wouldn't argue with him.  Let's go home, honey!


We have been learning about all kinds of bears in Science and we just had Teddy Bear Day to wrap it all up.  I mean, why not?  We had the 100th Day and then Valentine's Day and then nothing.  So let's do SOMETHING.  I can't just have a normal week.  What would I do with myself?


Thanks to my friend, Christina,  for this wonderful idea:  we paint T-shirts for the kids to wear on Teddy Bear day.  


Here's the tricky part.  I need parent volunteers to help me with this and I prefer that they come in during the morning with the hopes of finishing up by lunch time.  My partner and I were in a bit of a disagreement.  I was all for just DOING IT and asking for forgiveness later.  She was of the mind that we should ask permission.


Yes, to paint T-shirts.


What a dilemma.  I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.


What with our HOLIER THAN THOU TWO AND A HALF LANGUAGE ARTS BLOCK THAT SHALT NOT BE INTERRUPTED, we were worried about parent volunteers pulling our little cherubs to paint a gosh darn t-shirt, especially with the threat of the Curriculum Cops on the scene.  Because I don't know about you, but we simply have nothing else to worry about.


So I gave in to my partner and sent a kiss-butt ridiculous nice email, asking if we could do this.


The response?


We're the best first grade teachers ever.  OF COURSE we can do this.  They TRUST us.


I'm shaking my head as I write this.  But anywho -- here's how it went down.


I supply all of the fabric paint and ask the students to bring in their own shirts.  Every year, I have one or two generous families who contribute extras so that I always have t-shirts for those who may forget or don't have the resources.  


I had three volunteers come in on Day 1 to pull my kids and guide them through the first part.

The kiddos get to choose the stencil that they want.  I slide cardboard into the shirt so that the surface is hard and smooth (and the paint won't also stick to the back of the shirt).  They also get to do a little freehand painting as well.  If you think about doing this with your kids, I caution you on painting the sky.  Don't.  It gets really messy and continues on and on and on and on.  There's no way to really stop the sky, and the next thing you know, it's all over the sleeves, the collar, bleeding into the grass, and the sun, etc.  NO SKY.  NO SKY.  NO SKY. 

We only had one mishap.  And it could be because the parent volunteer has four daughters and no experience with boys (so she says).  Or it could be because new boy wanted to introduce himself to you guys.  In an illustration.  Just so you could see.  Because I had 28 T-shirts with bright, yellow, happy suns.  And then new boy painted this:

I rest my case.  THIS is new boy.  In all his glory.   

We let them dry overnight.  Then I bagged up the t-shirts, various colors of paint, and some samples from previous years for my three volunteers.  Each parent took home a bag of about 10 t-shirts and added all of the fun details (years ago, I let the kids do their own details.  Bad idea.  Bad.  BAD.  Use your imagination.)

Take a look:

We had a great day and did lots of different activities with our teddy bears.  I had high hopes of uploading my documents to Scribd but instead, the Lost Footage of the Beverly Hills Housewives kind of got in my way.  Along with Grey's Anatomy.  I'm catching up on my Tivo if you can't tell.  So I'll come back tomorrow with those.

Before I go, is anyone else bothered by the new code you have to put in to leave comments on people's blogs?  It's TWO WORDS.  One of the words is easy to read, and the other is some sort of special Spy protection that apparently requires fancy eyewear that I do not have in my collection of accessories.  I never get it right.  Then I have to try again, and it appears as if they are making it easier for me, but I don't get it that time, either.  I ALWAYS get it on the third try, but I think that's because the protection people have decided I'm just too dumb to do any hacking or hurting of one's blog, and they just let me in (and, in any case, I am too dumb to do any hacking or hurting of one's blog).  I think you should consider getting rid of that.  You just might get more comments that way.  Kristen over at Ladybug's Teacher Files has an easy tutorial to follow.  Check it out {HERE}.  Please think about this.  For my sanity.  I appreciate it.

So I'll be back tomorrow with those fun teddy bear documents, but probably not until after church and a brunch for a friend's birthday.  See you then!