It’s that time of year again, that most joyous of seasons, when I start my Mo Willems author study with the kindergarten classes! We started today with the Pigeon books, and I am pretty elated.

Mo Willems Season doesn’t fall on the calendar at the same time every year, but every Mo Willems Season is like Second Christmas to me. Everyone seems a little nicer during Mo Willems Season; a little wittier, a little more delightfully absurd. There’s an extra spring in my step the week I teach the kids how to draw The Pigeon. I am almost deliriously cheerful the week a new crop of kindergartners is introduced to Reginald Von Hoobie-Doobie. And I always need to take a moment to collect myself during Knuffle Bunny Week, when Knuffle is passed on to the next generation. Elephant and Piggie, Cat the Cat, Leonardo, Amanda, Goldilocks. This year I have decided to extend the festivities into June.

What makes this year’s Mo Willems Season even more awesome is the fact that April is the 10th anniversary of the publication of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, Mr. Willems’ first book. I know I’m down to the wire here with one day of April left, but I am still celebrating the start of the festive season during anniversary month. And there are some pretty great ways for anyone to be celebrating the big anniversary.

Like this new anniversary set, with smaller editions of 3 Pigeon books in their own bus box:

How cool is that? The books are perfectly Hannah-sized, and since the Pigeon was her very first read aloud, and her collection of autographed books began with The Pigeon, I thought she should have a set.

There was also last week’s release of the latest Willems adventure, That Is Not a Good Idea.

And really, the thing I am truly geeking out over this April is the release of Cloud9′s collection of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus fabrics! I cannot believe this is really a thing!

I have been stalking fabric sites all month anxiously awaiting the release of this fabric. Since tomorrow is the end of April, I’m guessing it will go into May before I can order some. But when I can, look out…I have already warned Adam that my fabric budget will be blown on this collection. A Pigeon sundress for Hannah? Another lift-the-flap quilt? A bag for me? All of the above.

It’s the (second) most wonderful time of the year!

Saturday was Dr. Seuss’s birthday, and last Friday was Read Across America at school. I made paper bag Cat in the Hat hats with all the K, 1, and 2 classes during the week. I worked with the PTA president to put together some fun prizes for a Dr. Seuss door decorating contest. I sent out Dr. Seuss trivia all week. It was a great week for books, and it was also the first time in my current district that I’ve tried working on school-wide programming for Read Across America. Last year I was on maternity leave by now, and the year before that it seemed like teachers really did their own thing. So I haven’t been in the spirit since my last big program 3 years ago. It was great.

I brought back the paper bag hats this year in all of my K, 1, and 2 classes throughout the week.

I do love these hats. It was also Pajama Day.

I ended up with smaller bags than past years, but I improvised.

The teachers got pretty into the door decorating contest, too. This is the door that one for 4th grade.

I did a Dr. Seuss bulletin board for March, but I went very minimal.  There were so many cool doors and decorations all over the school that I just wanted some simple, colorful quotes in a Dr. Seuss font I downloaded.

So I’ve had this Dr. Seuss fabric for a while now, at least a couple of years. I have 3 different collections of Dr. Seuss fabric and have never thought of a great project for them. But I’ve been working for weeks with the PTA on Read Across America projects for tomorrow, so I’ve had Dr. Seuss on the brain. It was time to make Hannah a new play quilt (she’s been taking this one to her sitter’s all year) and I thought a lift-the-flap quilt would be really cool for her at this age. So I’ve been inspired, and I thought it would be a fun quilt to work on leading up to her first birthday.

I’d seen a couple of examples on Pinterest that I liked, but none were quite right. So I’ve been experimenting with some design ideas and finally came up with a block that I’m really loving. A simple 4 patch using 2 squares of the text fabric and 2 squares with characters. The character  squares are under the flaps, which are all made with various stripes and dots from my Grinch and Cat in the Hat fabrics. So at first glance it’s just text, dots, and stripes. But there are surprises under every flap. Every square I cut was 6.5″.

I’m using black fabric as the sashing between blocks, so the top right flaps were attached when I sewed those strips on.

The bottom left flaps were pinned and sewn in when I sewed the 4 patches together.

This actually ended up using way more fabric than I’d originally realized, because I’m making 16 blocks total. But it’s coming together so quickly.

To make the flaps, I folded fat quarters in half and cut 6.5″ squares on the fold.

So really I cut rectangles, but I just found this made it much easier to sew up. Right sides together, I sewed three sides closed, leaving the side opposite the fold completely unstitched.

Then it was easy to turn them right side out and topstitch around the 3 sewn sides. That left the tops free and clean to pin in place over the 4 patch blocks I’d made.

So next I’m piecing the blocks together into a 4 block by 4 block quilt top. But, of course, I now realize that sewing the black sashing strips onto the left and right sides of these blocks will be tricky since the flaps may get in the way. I’ll have to be pretty careful with them, we’ll see how it works out!

We’ve had quite a rash of snowstorms since the new year, with none of them turning into snow days. Which is just as well, since a snow day at this point will mean a longer school year in June–we’re still making up days from Sandy. But, I still have winter snow fever. So a few weeks ago I read these two stories to my kindergarten and Multiply Disabled classes:

Then I showed the kindergartners how to make paper snowflakes. Once in a while, it’s not the worst thing in the world to make the library a bit of a mess.

I can’t believe it’s been more than a week since I’ve posted. I’m not even sure why, this week just went really quickly. Last weekend was full of awesome birthday celebrations, which I will post more about in the next few days. And it’s just been quick and a little exhausting. We’re trying to work out a new morning and evening routine here, so we’ve been kind of hyper-focused on that. But the end result is that I have a pile of stuff to post about now, including the fact that Hannah turned 11 months old yesterday!

I took a ton of photos of her last night, but she was a little overtired and I wasn’t happy with them. We had an awful morning today trying to get blood drawn for some routine baby stuff, and that required a great deal of snuggle naps and smiling faces to bring everyone back to a happy place. Hannah’s now asleep, but Adam and I are still not recovered. It was traumatizing, and we have to go back because it couldn’t be done properly. It’s been a funny weekend so far. But, I can get that out of my mind with these photos I took while we played in Hannah’s room before dinner tonight. She is very much enjoying the 2013 Caldecott books.