Merry Christmas

I hope you have a wonderful, blessed Merry Christmas - from our home to yours!

My Top Fourteen in 2014

I can't believe that this year is almost finished, it has gone by so fast.  I haven't had a lot of time to blog this year, my grandbabes have kept me busy.  Plus, hubby came home after being in Hawaii for 3 years, so there was some adjusting.  So glad that he is home.

I am linking up for my top 14 in 2014.  These are in no particular order.

ONE

My oldest grandbabe, Siouxsie promoted from 6th grade.  She is the sweetest girl.

TWO

My grandson, Keahi, turned two.  He has brought me lots of joy and laughter.  My sister is holding his hand down because he thought it was a smash cake like his first birthday.

THREE

I finished knitting my first sweaters for these two.  They weren't as hard as I thought the would be.

FOUR

I started test knitting for people that design knitting patterns.  My grandbabe loves to model the finished product for me.  Knitting these patterns has helped calm me.  I started having chest pains and high blood pressure in October, so this helps relax me.

FIVE

Grandbabes, Bowie and Remie, along with their cousin Sophie turned 1.  They were all born the same day, so we had one big party to celebrate.

SIX

My youngest grandbabe, Lily turned 1 in November.  She shares her birth date with my #2 son.  We had a Swan Princess theme party because her middle name is Odette like the Swan Princess.

SEVEN

We made a trip to Boulder, CO and I finally, got to meet the wonderful person that dyes all the yarn that I buy.  I have been buying yarn from her for 5 years, so I was excited to finally meet her.  This is how she dries the yarn.

EIGHT

This one is hard.  This is my sister and she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Ovarian cancer a couple of weeks ago.  She wanted her hair dyed Candy Cane red for the holidays, so my daughter in law dyed it for her.  She started chemo last week.  She has a long fight ahead of her, it just makes me sad that she is fighting Cancer, again.

NINE

Grandbabes, Kayleigh and Morrigan turned 7 and 6 this year.  They are sisters born on the same day, one year apart.

TEN

My niece got married this summer, so we traveled to Colorado for the wedding.  I teach at a year round school, so we snuck this trip in.  I got back the day before school started - won't be doing a trip like that, again.

ELEVEN

My first pineapple that we grew in California.  It was so yummy and sweet.

TWELVE

I went with some friends to Beverly Hills for a wine tasting lunch.  Our champagne had gold flecks in it.  My sister said that it was Lisa VanderPump's restaurant - I have no idea who that is.  The last picture is Rodeo Drive, yes that is a chandelier hanging in the middle of the street.

THIRTEEN

My niece and her family came out for my sister's surgery over Thanksgiving break.  The kids had never seen the ocean, they were having so much fun.  The weather was a warm 85.

FOURTEEN

And the last event, I am going to be a grandma in May, again.  So excited for another grandbabe, #9 - a boy..  Now, if they would just decide on a name, I would be happy.

I hope you have a wonderful, blessed Christmas.

Monday Make-It - August 11

Well, another week has flown by - getting that much closer to my month off.  I have been busy making things for my room, so I am linking up with Tara.  I love Monday Make-It, it keeps me creative and inspired.

I take a lot of pictures when I go to Disneyland.  So since my classroom is Disney theme this year - I decided to make a memory game with some of the pictures.

This was super easy to do.  I printed doubles of each picture at 4 x 6, then put a piece of 4 x 6 scrapbook paper on the back. This set has the black polka dots on the back.  Laminate the photos and you have a great memory game for free centers.  

I am going to make one set with just the princesses using a different scrapbook paper, so they don't get mixed up.  I can add more picture cards to each group, when I feel my little ones are ready for it.

 A set with pictures of the kids would be a great beginning of the year center. 

This center was inspired by Jennifer at First Grade Blue Skies.  I have used the little photo albums before in my classroom, but it got me all inspired with the possibilities.  I made my own set of letter printing practice flashcards using a Disney theme, of course.

I made a set of uppercase and lowercase letters, then put them into two albums.  This way, I can have two students at a time in the center, then they can switch the albums

My head is swimming with different ideas for these albums.  

You can find it HERE

I, finally, finished my ABC small books - it was a year in the making.  My little ones did the books last year, but I needed to finish putting them together in a packet.  There are 24 books, because X, Y and Z are in one book.  My kids loved them.

You can find it  HERE

Have a great week and thanks for stopping by.  If you go back to work this week, I wish you calm days.

Monday Make-It - August 4

I finished my first month of school, whew.  It has been a challenging month, but we made it.  It seems like that I have been doing lots of creating to balance my busy class, but not a lot of projects getting finished.  My hubby says that I have been brain spinning, a lot.  We went to Disneyland, yesterday, for some stress release and I came home with 4 new project ideas.

I am linking up with 4th Grade Frolics to share a couple of the projects that I finished this week.

My classroom is a Disney theme, this year - so you will be seeing a lot of Mickey stuff in my room.

I wanted to add plants to my classroom, but I wanted the pots to be cute.

These pots are on the bigger size, 8 inches (I think).  I found everything that I needed for this project laying around in my house, except for the plants.

I painted the outside of the pot white, first.  Then, painted the red or black on - the red and black paint covers better with a base of white.  The polka dots were made with a polka dot sponge that I got at Hobby Lobby, a while ago.

I sealed them with Mod Podge, because I didn't want to go buy a sealer.  It worked great.

I love the way they turned out.

I went to Home Depot before school to buy the plants.  Apparently, when you buy a plant sometimes they include a free lizard as a bonus.  I was putting one of the plants in the pot, 2 hours after I bought it, and there was a lizard on one of the leaves.  I might have let out a little scream, okay, a big scream.  I am so thankful, it didn't decided to leave the plant when I was driving.

I am loving this next project.  It was so much fun to make.  It is a great way to recycle all the stuff that we having laying around the house.  The only thing that I bought were some extra pompoms.  I made one as a sample and my 20 month old grandson played with it for 15 minutes.  Then, he hid it from me - so he could play with it later, lol.  I am going to make him and the twins a set - I guess I need to drink more water.

I made 12 color sensory bottles.  Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, white, gray, brown, black and rainbow.

The key is to only fill them up a little more than halfway.  If, you fill them all the way then you can't see all the goodies inside.

Here is a sample of what I put in my yellow bottle. The plastic eggs and paper clips I got from the Dollar Store, earlier in the year.  The ribbon was left over from my center leis.  The flowers are from my scrapbooking bin.  I have a huge container of buttons.

I made sorting mats with the color words, so after they played with them - they could sort by color word.

I made a packet of the directions, photos of all the bottles and the sorting mats.  You can find it here for free.

The next make-it was a result of our trip to Disneyland, yesterday.  I was inspired by this.

A whole wall of Jelly Bellies. They started to look like little pompoms.  I discovered that they had different mixes.  My favorite was this.

A Mickey Mouse mix of jelly bellies.  Which led to this.

After, I had my nap - I went to the Party store and bought some confetti packs to add to the bottle.  It didn't take very much, still have a bunch left.  The crystal Mickeys are from a sticker sheet, the kind that is on plastic.  I left it attached to the plastic and cut around them.

My finished Mickey sensory bottles.  My dad saved the little bottles for me, perfect size for the grand kids.

Have a great week, I'm going to make more bottles - Disney style.

Five for Friday - July 18

It is Friday, ok, maybe Saturday morning, but woo hoo!!!!  This week was easier than last week - so I think it was a success.  I am linking with Kacey this week.

I, finally, took a picture of the Mickey board with the kids' pictures added.  We left some blank Mickeys, too.  I think this board turned out amazing for the first couple weeks of school.  I'm going to hate taking it down, but it needs to be replaced with student work.  I will leave the rosettes and just take down the Mickey heads.

I re-did my Center boards.  I made new leis, because I gave each of my babes' one at the end of the year.  I found the cutest center clip art from Krista Walden.  Since, I have an autistic child this year - I needed to make everything with visuals, plus it is just good practice.  I think she has about 6 or 7 different files, I probably should have bought the whole bundle.

This is the easiest way for me to control centers with my little people.  If the leis are gone, then they can't go to that center.  There is never any fighting.  You could always use plain ribbon, beads or yarn to make the necklaces.

I found this great sensory activity on Pinterest, that I knew would be perfect with my class.  You cook spaghetti noodles in kool-aid and it dyes the noodles.  

One package of spaghetti noodles, divided into 3 portions.

3 packets of Kool-aid or other drink, unsweetened

5 cups of water for each portion/

Put the water in a pot, add the drink packet and boil.  When it is boiling, add one spaghetti portion and cook until tender.  Drain, rinse with cool water.  Add noodles to a ziploc bag and repeat the process.  When finished with all three portions, add 1 tablespoon of oil to the ziploc bag and squish.

Put the noodles in a bowl and let them play.  Their hands will be a little slimy, but just wash with soap.

My kids loved it, except for one.  I think it was a texture thing. 

This week, was all about the Letter "A", so we made paper art apples for their ABC books. This was their first attempt with glue and they surprised me with their glue portion control.  Ok, it was more like shocked me.  They did a great job.

A year ago, a husband of  one of our Kinder teachers died while he was on duty.  It is sad.  She hasn't returned to work yet.  An apple tree was donated to the Kinder playground and we planted it.  We have loved and watered the tree.  It is a daily reminder to us, how special life is.

Today, when we watered the tree - we found 5 apples.  Yup, 5 of them.  The Kinder teachers were excited and sad at the same time.  A few of us shed tears.  Yes, it is only an apple tree -

 but it is a very special apple tree to us.