We are in the throes of Earth Day and loving every second!!! I am getting my bulletin boards ready and made this little guy. People tell me, “Oh, you are such a good artist.” This cracks me up every.single.time. I tell them I can’t draw, but I can trace and spend hours coloring! Now for a really exciting trick! The Crayola color “Haystack” is the perfect skin color! Seriously, this kid I am coloring could be any number of races. This color is a perfect blend a multi-culture coloring! It’s worth it to me. I am using my Little Earth Hugger with my Easy Ecology Unit. The 10 page little book is my favorite! I used the cover to make the bulletin board. I just plopped it under my document camera and traced! I had a teacher at my school roll her eyes once and say “UUUUUGGGG you have too much time on your hands!” But it’s kind of relaxing to color. I also enlist tons of little kiddlet help. This is my Jackson when he was 4. {Sigh} This was 3 years ago! I had just found Cara Carroll’s blog and knew I had to do her word doctor activity. I needed a little help coloring while I made dinner. My little guy volunteered. My husband ran out the room when I asked for helpers! I don’t blame him. I color at home a lot. I know he thinks if he does it once, I’ll beg him to help more often (He is not wrong.) Obviously, I colored the body, but my little guy could handle the hair. Look at his sweet concentration {sigh again}. Just to keep the word doctor theme going I added a Hawaiian shirt and turned him into a dentist for the week we covered compound words! Also keep in mind that the kids can color as part of a center. I don’t think they should spend a lot of class time coloring, but sometimes it’s nice to give them 5 minutes of ownership. Big kids also like to help during their lunch. My students colored this dragon head and also the tail. With 30 kids helping, it gets done super quickly! But with all that help, things do go wrong. One minute the dragon’s tail had a pattern in the scales and the next minute the tail was entirely black. Hey, you have to roll with it! You can also project onto colored paper and glue the pieces together. That’s how I made this enormous eagle for my American Symbols unit. Have fun with your boards, and try going big! It makes a HUGE impact! Remember to enter the Jo Totes giveaway and blog make-over giveaways going on my blog this week!