Painting a Rainbow

Linus told me he wanted to paint a big rainbow and needed a big piece of paper. The largest we have on hand is leftover packing paper. He used his construction roller to try to roll out the wrinkles. The best part of the video for me is when he paints a parrot, including a nut for it to eat.

He loves making things with craft supplies. In the last few days he has made jungle snakes out of pipe cleaners and googly eyes. He also cut a piece of paper into quarters, glued them end to end, decorated it with big googly eyes and a pink feather. He said it was a snake for me. Yesterday he made Valentines. He made one for me and one for himself out of pink construction paper.

Valentine Exchange

The valentine exchange at school was a big hit with Linus. He needed to prepare 15 cards for classmates and two for his teachers. He used some that came in his Highlights High Five magazine and some that I printed off the net. He cut all of them out by himself and did a decent job of writing his name on the back of all of them. I doubt that anyone could read his name because he signed some of them with just a few letters of his name and on some he used some stamper markers to create letters by stamping in the shape. I was amazed he stuck with it to complete all of them. He also stamped them with hearts and lips and stuck plenty of stickers on them. He even made one for himself!

I enjoyed watching him pull all of the cards from his decorated bag. A fair number of them were handmade and some came with sweets. He ate all of the sweets in one sitting: two iced cookies, two Tootsie rolls, a mini pack of M&Ms, and a mini pack of Sweet Tart conversation hearts. He liked that there were words on the latter. He was most excited about the dinosaur card from Ethan and the heart from his teachers. They attached a little container of Play-do to it.

He has developed a preference for wearing button-down shirts. He looks very handsome in them. Matthew wears button-down shirts five days a week (he also looks handsome), so perhaps that is influencing him. He found a blue and yellow vertical striped button-down at the store today and was crushed when I told him it was a size 6.

I made him the felt heart to go over a button on his shirt. His teachers asked about it right away and he proudly told them, "Mama gave it to me when she came up from her shower!"

Preschool Update

We are all enamored with Linus' preschool, so we are signing him up to attend one more year there. He is always excited to go there and is full of joy telling me about what he did that day. They made crystals on Friday and even though he could tell me they used water, food coloring, and Borax, I have no idea how they made them. He told me to find out how because he wants to do them at home, too. Heidi has had the kids practice writing their first names each day. Last week when I picked him up he announced, "I wrote an 's'! All by myself! I thought about it while I wrote the other letters. And then I tried it and wrote it. I wanted to try it so you'd be proud of me." I cheered him on and told him, "I am proud of you. I'm proud of you for doing your best!"

He gets along with all of the kids, but he has noticed that three of the girls "really like each other a lot!" A couple of weeks ago those three were starting to act cliquey, but Heidi and Laura nipped that in the bud. They explained that everyone is friends at school. If someone says another kid can't play, then they've been instructed to say, "It's not okay to say you can't play." I'm amazed how effective this strategy is. They provide the kids with verbal tools to use in difficult situations and the kids put them to use and relationships run quite smoothly in class. My favorite continues to be, "Stop! I don't like that," which is declared while holding one's hand up and out like a stop sign. (Perhaps I should fly to Washington and provide a workshop to members of Congress.)

Some things Linus has said recently:

* I was on the couch recovering from a stomach flu and Matthew went to change the radio from news to classical music. As he did this Linus said," Yes, relaxing sick person music." Usually he refers to it as "pretty music."
*He was having a dessert of lego-shaped candies. He took a few pieces out of the bag and then told Matthew he could put the bag away. Matthew praised him and said, "Good job limiting yourself to a moderate amount of candy." Linus replied, "Thank you. But I don't know what moderate means."
*I was getting him out of the car and he asked, "Can we go to outer space?" I told him that we may be able to one day, but not at this time. "Why not?" he asked. I told him the fuel for rockets is really, really expensive. I love how he thinks that going to the rain forest, Hawaii, or space is like going to the library.
*Sometimes I'm surprised at how mature he has become. We had a friend joining us for dinner and Linus made such polite conversation with her. He told her his favorite foods are pancakes and blueberries. Rather than continuing on jabbering away, which how he is with us at the dinner table, he looked to Marie and asked, "What are your favorite foods?" A bit later he told her, "It is nice having you for dinner." Yay! I was cheering on the inside. She did get to witness a bit of a tantrum when Matthew hauled him off for a bath.
*He was playing with cars on the bathroom floor while I got ready in the morning and I overheard him say that one of the cars was being presidential. I queried, "Presidential?" He answered, "Yes. What does presidential mean?" "Well," I answered. "Being presidential means you are wise and make important decisions for a lot of people about big issues." He said, "Obama is presidential of everything."

(Pictures from the Denver Art Museum. Don't you love how cutting requires one to stick out their tongue in concentration?)