HOP ON POP

According to Hannah's teacher, when her class came back after Christmas several of them kept getting their clip moved to yellow or red. In case you are not familiar with this discipline system. that is not a good thing. Thankfully, Hannah has always stayed on green.

At the end of January her teacher told the class that if they all stayed on green for the entire month of February they could vote on something special to do. That was quite a challenge for a class of nine 4-5 year olds. They stepped up to the challenge and were very well behaved. They each got to vote on what they wanted to do for their special reward. Hannah couldn't decide so in true Hannah style, she just refused to vote.

The class decided they would have a "Dress as a character from your favorite book day." Hannah and I talked about it and her first decision was to go as the Very Hungry Caterpillar. I had the costume plan all in my head. On the Saturday morning before she had to dress up, I confirmed her costume selection before putting any effort into making it. She said, "I'm not sure that is what I want to be, but we don't have to dress up until Monday." Each Monday her homework is to bring in a picture or flat object that begins with the letter they will be studying that week. We have had many days where we have forgotten to do this until Monday morning. I had to explain to her that unlike clipping a picture from a magazine, I could not create a costume between 8-9 on Monday morning.

We started looking through some of her favorite books. We love Dr. Seuss at our house and she had narrowed our library down to Fox in Socks, Horton Hatches an Egg and Hop on Pop. She finally decided to be the little girl who hops on Pop. This is a true family favorite. One year at Christmas before Hannah was born I bought P.K. a Hop on Pop ornament because it reminded me of Aaron and Rachel attacking him. It is a wind up ornament and the two little kids actually hop up and down on Pop.

I can't sew. Well, I own a sewing machine and sew the kids' scout patches on their uniforms. But that is pretty much where my talents in that area end. This costume was all cutting and hot glue. I bought a hooded sweatshirt on clearance for about $3 at WalMart. I traced the hoodie on the material, cut it out and hot glued it to the hoodie. At first it was too tight, so I cut it up the back hot glued on some extra material and added velcro to close it. I wish I would have spent some more time fixing the hood and made it a bit cleaner, but it worked. We had planned to cover her pants in the material as well, but it took a lot longer to do the rest of the costume than expected. It looked pretty good from a distance.

Now Hannah and I are trying to talk the rest of the family into dressing up as Dr. Seuss characters for Halloween. I know it is over 7 months away, but did I mention that it takes longer to hot glue fuzzy material than one might think?