Memories...

Tonight for our bedtime story, we read one of my favorites, Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. This book was recommeded to me by my mentor teacher, Mrs. Cunningham, while I was student teaching third grade in Provo, UT. It is a story about how Miss Rumphius decides she can make the world more beautiful by planting lupine flowers all over her town. When I finished reading it, I was so inspired! The illustrations are wonderful too. Reading it tonight reminded me of when Matt was a preschooler and Alex was a toddler in Arlington, Virginia. We read the book together and then thought of ways we could beautify the world. We decided to start with an art project. We made our own lupine flower pictures by making shavings of different shades of pink and purple crayons and arranging the shavings between 2 pieces of waxed paper. We placed our "bouquets" on an ironing board and covered them with a towel before we pressed them with an iron. We matted them with construction paper and hung them in the window of our apartment. The kids loved the craft and it made the book a little more special to me.