Gavin's First Show

Gavin's class has been doing a "Vehicle Unit" for the past 4 weeks or so. He has loved every day of it! The students read books about going places, made pictures of cars, learned road signs, worked on colors using the cars in the parking lot, etc. The unit ended Monday with a "culminating activity." This involved the parents making a car for the kids to wear. You just have to see this...

We decided to make the car look like Lightning McQueen. We started with a plain bankers box and Francis wrapped it in red poster board. I made lightning bolts, wheels, tail lights, and a mouth. Francis made headlights and did all the gluing (or rubber-cementing), buying the materials, and cutting of cardboard. We used a pair of Francis' old clip-on suspenders to hold it on Gavin's shoulders.

Here is Gavin measuring his car while I sketched:

Making sure the wheels are in the right spot:








This may have been Gavin's favorite part of the construction - digging through Daddy's tool box to pick out the right tools to attach the wheels:




Ta-daa! The finished project:





We brought the car to school and gathered in a room to wait for Gavin's class. When the kids came in, the parents put the cars on their children.

Next we made a parade around the school. The other students sat in the hallway near their classrooms and clapped as we went by. Gavin and I ended up leading the parade:

I can't say this enough times... managing all the children was like herding cats! We had a traffic jam when we were supposed to turn around:

After the parade, we went back to the big room so the kids could sing songs to us. The kids were supposed to line up to go through the "car wash." Again, herding cats.

The kids all took their cars through the "car wash." Introducing... Gavin!



I was looking forward to hearing the songs, because every day when Gavin gets in the van he tells me about the songs he sang in school. But he didn't sing them for me, so all I knew was that one was about cars and one was about sticks.

Gavin singing the "Ridin' in the Car" song:



Gavin singing the "Stick Tune:"

I love the joyful look on his face... he just loves the "Stick Tune!"

After the songs, we were invited to decorate "traffic light" cookies, but Gavin wasn't interested in them. So we visited his classroom. He showed me the listening station and explained that he wears one set of headphones and "a friend" wears the other set:

Then he showed me all of the materials that he uses in the art center:

Then he showed us his cubby:

We went back to the main room to wait for Evie's class to finish up. Her nurse brought her to the room (usually she brings Evie out to our van in this wagon):

It was so much fun! We had a great time. I was super excited to see what the children were going to do, because you never know with three-year-olds. And it was neat to see Gavin following directions (something he doesn't always do at home)!