All the Colors I am Inside

Colorful Wednesday!

We began by spray painting a mural on the playground.  The spray bottles were hard to manipulate and we all had to find our own technique...

What I didn't imagine when hanging this pristine white canvas at the ready this morning was the alternative canvas that would invite the more puckish amongst us...

The whimsy of Shel Silverstein springs to mind:

My skin is kind of sort of brownish

Pinkish yellowish white.

My eyes are greyish blueish green,

But I'm told they look orange in the night.

My hair is reddish blondish brown,

But it's silver when it's wet.

And all the colors I am inside

Have not been invented yet.

Of course, we had to try a dangerous thing today or I was going to be run out of town at sundown...

Today's dangerous feat, Learning to Walk a Tightrope

Tightrope Walking 101 begins with the wide plank of the sandbox, an Easy A for all these masters.

Moving on to the 200 level course took a tad more effort...

Inside, a special surprise awaited us!  I began (at Pam's suggestion) reading Jan Brett's "Hedgie's Surprise".

This is the story of a hen whose eggs are stolen daily by a Tomten.  "What's a tomten?", I asked.  "A goblin!" announced Annabelle.  "How did you EVER know that?", I wondered, suitably impressed.  "I have that book!", she replied.  Content that Annabelle and I are now intellectual equals (one hopes!), the story continues.   Hedgie teams up with Hen to outwit the Tomten and save Hen's eggs.  As we finished the book, I queried, "Why did the Tomten run away when it felt Hedgie in Hen's nest?"  "Because of the prickles!" everyone answered in unison.  "Have you ever felt a hedgehog's prickles?"  "No!"  And with that, Aislinn brought out her pet hedgehog, Charlotte!  What an adorable ball of prickliness that not all of us wanted to touch!

Charlotte was NOT interested in meeting our finger puppet Hedgie, but she was interested in exploring shoes.

After Charlotte was safely back in her travel carrier, we all curled up like tiny hedgehogs...

We moved on to using a mortar and pestal to grind spices and enjoy the aromas we released from rose buds, coffee beans, star anise and cinnamon.

We also put watercolors to paper...

...constructed with the magnatiles...

...discovered tessellation with the help of Escher's lizards...

...and created a rainbow of crayons.