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.

Monday Make It - July 14

I am linking up with  Tara for Monday Make it.  I get really sad when these weekly creative sessions are over with.

I have been busy creating a bunch of goodies for my classroom and at home for the grandbabes.  I love it when I can be creative, it helps relax me. First up is something that I made for my grandbabes.

I knitted 3 of these dresses for the younger girls to wear on the 4th of July,  but was only able to get a picture of one of them wearing it since we were gone for the 4th.  The yarn is hand dyed by a friend in Colorado.  Each stripe is a different ball of yarn.

I still need to get a picture of all the girls in the dresses, but I was so tired this weekend from the first week of school - it didn't happen

Next, is something I made for  my TK/Kinder Team with some help from a couple of friends.

I had these red bags, so I asked my new TK partner if she would put every one's name on them.  They are a nice canvas bag.  I added a calendar that I made for each teacher and a custom made cup that I bought from one of the PTA moms.  She personalized each cup.  The girls were thrilled when I passed them out at our first day meetings.  I need to make a couple more for my old First Grade Team, they were a little sad.

I bought the Teacher Planner from The Learning Effect and just used the calendar portion.  I, actually, have two different versions of her planner and love it.

I got permission from Tiffany to make the calendars, since I was prefilling in all the dates.

I filled in dates of all our Team's birthdays, staff meetings, track on and track off dates (we are a year round school), conference dates and meeting dates.  I printed them at home using a thicker paper - 32 pound.  It is not as heavy as cardstock but works well.  I laminated the front and back cover.  Staples spiral bound them for me. It took some time to make them, but they all loved them - so it was worth it.. 

I made something for my classroom.  The rosettes were fun to make, but time consuming.  I love the way they make this board look - so I would make them again.  Our custodian took a picture of the board to show his girlfriend, too cute.

I used 4 sheets of construction paper and a 6 inch circle of scrapbook paper for the middle.  The black one is 20 inches across and the yellow ones are 18.  They are easy to make, it just takes time to score and fold these many rosettes.

This yellow one is 20 inches, just a closer look.  We are doing a Disney theme this year, so you can see a Mickey paper middle.

Then I used my Cricut to cut 5 1/2 inch Mickey heads out of construction paper.  I took pictures the first day of school and we added them to the center of the Mickey head.  I forgot to take a picture, it is adorable. 

 Ignore the mess in front of the board, we were setting up the room.

Here is the board, I am in love with it.  It took some time, but it was so worth it.  You can see I made smaller ones for the opposite sides of the board

I am going to check out what everybody has been busy making this week.  Enjoy your summer, but think of me because I already went back to school.  Sigh.

Saturday Snapshots - July 12

I am linking up with Michelle for Saturday Snapshots.

I took 700 plus pictures of my niece's wedding on the 4th of July.  It is going to take me awhile to go through all of them, especially since I started back to school this last week.  I am posting a few of them here. 

My last day of school was June 27, then I started getting my room ready on June 30 because school started back on July 7.  I spent the week of  June 30 in my room and in meetings for the beginning of the year.  My niece lives in Colorado, so we flew out late on July 2nd for the wedding.  Her wedding was beautiful -  small and personal. She didn't miss a detail.

My niece and her daughter.  

My sister (her mom) had cervical cancer when she was pregnant with my niece. She had to receive treatment while she was still pregnant.  It was very scary. So, my niece was a miracle baby.  My niece was always told that she wouldn't be able to get pregnant because of all the treatment my sister had received.

But, they were wrong - another miracle baby, Elizabeth my grand niece was born last year.

My niece, her new hubby, their daughter and his kids - who my niece adores.  Her new hubby has the nicest family that we are now a part of.  I am glad she found the perfect guy, I just wish they didn't live so far away.

My niece's bouquet.

Have a wonderful weekend, I have lots of catching up to do at home.  The two naps I had yesterday, cut into my productive time.