St. Patrick's Day Arts and Crafts

Since it was so rainy and cold this past weekend, I tried to keep Ella busy with a few things from my teaching days for St. Patrick's Day! I wanted to share in case you and your little leprechauns want to make something festive for Saturday! :)

First up, a leprechaun mask! 

You will need:

-paper plate with the middle cut out

-5 strips of orange paper (mine were about 1.5" thick)

-hat shape drawn on green paper

-small gray square (you could also use aluminum foil)

Color the paper plate orange.

Cut out the hat (I let Ella do it because she needs practice...clearly...and also because she has "kid" scissors).

On the gray square, draw a smaller black square for the "buckle." 

Take each strip of orange paper and wrap them around a marker or pencil to make them curly. 

Glue everything on, and viola! A leprechaun mask!

{Please ignore the mess in the background...we have a real life leprechaun living in our house named Lucas ;) who decided to make a huge mess while Ella and I were having arts and crafts time!}

We also did the perennial favorite, graphing Lucky Charms!

{I used this printable}

We made Shamrock Sun-catchers! I love making these for each season!

Here are the directions! The only change I made was to spray the tissue paper with water before putting a second piece of contact paper down, to help the colors run a little bit.

I also cheated and used one of the shamrock tracers I still had from my classroom!

Elsa, I mean Ella, was very excited about her sun catcher! She insisted on wearing her Elsa dress for about 80% of these activities. 

Last but not least, we made a rainbow with Fruit Loops!

I got the printable here. I had Ella color each row before putting the Fruit Loops on so she knew which color went where. 

We discovered that the Aldi brand of Fruit Loops that I bought did NOT have blue in it! Whoops. I think our rainbow looks great anyway :)

After nap today, we might make these Lucky Charm Treats I have seen circulating around Pinterest! They look super yummy!

Happy Early St. Patrick's Day!

Five on Friday!!

Happy Friday!!

Sorry I’ve been so absent from this little space of mine...I wish I had a good excuse but frankly, we just don’t have that much going on this time of year! No birthdays, no fun seasonal things...we’ve just been very low key and blah lately, which is kind of a welcome chance of pace!

Anyway!

1. I feel like I need to give a few thoughts on the Bachelor finale. 

-I love Becca, and can’t wait for her season of the Bachelorette. Yes, after Monday night I swore I’d never watch this crap again, but then ABC went ahead and named Becca bachelorette Tuesday night so...

-speaking of Becca, she reminds me of a strange combination of Jessica Garvin and Kristen from Vanderpump Rules. Anyone else see it?! 

-Arie definitely is my #1 worst bachelor everrrr, surpassing both Nick and Juan Pablo by at least 10 miles.

2. Moving on! I’m selling way too many of my kids clothes at my favorite consignment sale this weekend and if you’re in Charlotte, you should definitely check it out!! Here is what my car looked like yesterday on our way to drop everything off! 

The good news is that I’ve regained a little bit of my guest room closet! (Minus the dress up clothes, a few Well Dressed Wolf outfits, my wedding dress, some formal dresses and a large stash of off-season clothes!) 

3. Pro tip for consignment sale shopping: take a picture of your kids’ drawers/closets so you know what you already have. Ella needs some shorts for this summer pretty badly, so I snapped a quick pic of her shorts/capris drawer so I can make sure I’m not buying a color/style she already has. Much easier than making a list of what you already own (although I do love a good list)! 

4. Dr. Seuss’s birthday was last Friday and we celebrated by making these cute little cat in the hat props! Well, Ella made them...Lucas ripped his as soon as we tried to get him to take a picture with it. March is reading month, so by all means, you can certainly still make your own! Here is the link!! 

5. Sunday is one of my favorite days ever! Selection Sunday!!!! Yay!!! I’ll be making my favorite enchiladas, as our annual tradition!! Hope UNC gets a decent spot! Can’t wait to make my brackets with my kids!!

{Don't forget how last year turned out!!! Probably not happening this year, but hey we can all dream, right?!}

Have a great weekend!!! 

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Thanksgiving Arts & Crafts

Since Ella has been in preschool 3 days a week this fall, we haven't had nearly as much time to do fun seasonal stuff like we did this past summer! But I've been really trying to get out some of my fall/Thanksgiving themed stuff for her to work on after her naps! 

Since Thanksgiving is only a week away (HOW?!), I thought I'd share a few fun things we've been working on!

Turkey Initial Sound Match Up

You can actually buy this game on Teachers Pay Teachers here...but I was too poor when I was teaching for that, so I made my own version! I used turkey cut-outs that I already had (these), and then used pictures from my Words Their Way books (here...scroll all the way to the end of the document!) and glued them on paper I had cut out in a feather shape. 

I used to have this at an independent center, so to keep things simple, I chose 4 letters (sounds that had already been introduced at this point in our kindergarten year) instead of the whole alphabet: S, P, M and D.

Pipe Cleaner Turkey

I can't believe I couldn't find anything like this on the whole internet! Its super easy.

You will need:

-Construction paper: brown, red, orange and yellow

-Pipe cleaner(s) (I only needed one)

-Tracers (optional)

-pencil, glue and scissors

First we traced and cut out all of the shapes we needed: 

-large circle for the body

-large circle again (cut in half for the wings)

-small circle for the head

-2 feet

-4 feathers

-beak

-wattle

Glue the beak and wattle on the small circle. Draw it's eyes with a black marker.

Glue feathers and wings onto the back of the large circle.

Using a pencil, roll each pipe cleaner piece into a spiral.

And attach on head, body and feet!

Fall Leaf Suncatcher

We chose to spray a little water to make the colors run!

Torn Paper Fall Tree

What's The Missing Letter? Game

This is another one I couldn't find anywhere on the internet! 

Just make copies of a corn template....put a letter on each husk, and then a correlating letter on the corn. For example: put A and C on the husk, and then put B on the corn. The kids' job is to figure out which piece of corn goes in the middle of the letters on the husks. 

Construction Paper Turkey

The most similar thing to this that I could find is this paper plate turkey. Pretty much the same thing here, except we cut out a large paper circle instead of using a paper plate!

And last but certainly not least, Pilgrim Hats!

For the bonnet, trace a large uni-boob (don't you think that's what it looks like?!) shape out of a large piece of construction paper (I taped 2 pieces of regular sized pieces of construction paper together).

Fold the bottom up about 2 inches. 

Staple in the back.

Punch holes on the corners and tie around your child's head!

For the boy's hat...

Trace a hat shape on a large piece of black construction paper (again, I taped 2 pieces of regular size construction paper together).

Trace a trapezoid shape onto a piece of white paper. Glue onto the hat shape.

Cut a black square, and glue on top of the white trapezoid.

Glue a square piece of aluminum foil onto the black square.

Using a long strip of black paper for the back, bribe your child to hold still by offering them lots of snacks while you measure their head. Probably wait to take it off of their head before you staple it together ;) 

And voila! A pilgrim hat that your toddler will not keep on their head! :)

Happy Thanksgiving crafting, friends!!