Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Fangirling over a children's author.


We came home from our vacation to a handwritten letter to Everett from Mo Willems, and I think I was more excited about it than Everett was. Everett was kind of like, "Well, of course he sent me a letter back, because I sent him a letter and pictures first, mom." You know you have reached the pinnacle of cheesy motherhood when you fangirl over a children's author.

One of our favorite children's authors is Mo Willems. I can not even count the number of times we have read the Knuffle Bunny series, the Pigeon books, or our Elephant and Piggie books. Our Knuffle Bunny books are so well loved they are literally falling apart. For our "school" time this year, something I kept coming back to was just doing fun activities with books, especially with our favorite authors.

One of our final lessons of our "school year" was writing a letter to an author and mailing it off. The goal was to show our appreciation, learn about authors, the postal system, and letter writing.

We did several lessons with Mo Willems books throughout the school year, so it seemed appropriate to choose him to write and send a letter to.

(Here is a tangent that came to my mind as I was writing this. In eighth grade, we had to choose a celebrity to write a letter to in English class, and I chose Pauley Shore, which makes me laugh out loud to think about now. He sent me back an autographed photo, and I was so excited. Whatever happened to that guy?)

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I wrote a letter first to give Everett an example, then he "wrote" a letter and I dictated what he told me. This was our attempt at a self-timer photo with our letters before we sent them off.
The part that made Everett the most nervous was putting his letter in a mailbox. He couldn't quite comprehend how Mo Willems was going to get his letter.


We printed out photos of us enjoying Mo Willems books throughout the past couple of years and sent them with our letters:

Elephant and Piggie puppet show:
For this lesson, I checked out several Elephant and Piggie books from the library, including one we had never read, Should I Share My Ice Cream? We read all of the books, and then created Elephant and Piggie puppets. I drew and cut, and Everett colored and glued. Then, Everett got to share his ice cream with Elephant and Piggie. Finally, he did a puppet show for Cambria based on the story.
Making slop:
A few weeks later, Everett asked if we could have another Elephant and Piggie day for school, so we read our Elephant and Piggie books, including I Really Like Slop! Then, he made slop by collecting various things from our yard, and mixing them in a pot with water. It was simple, but he had a lot of fun. 
Other photos we sent Mo Willems:
Looking for Knuffle Bunny at the laundromat on a walk around North Park:
Leading up to Cambria's birth, we read Waiting is Not Easy:

Little Cambria gifted Everett Knuffle Bunny Free when he came to meet her for the first time at the hospital:
On the day we brought Cambria home from the hospital, we read Knuffle Bunny Free (not surprisingly, I cried while reading it). It quickly became a household favorite.

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