Happy Mother's Day!

This is what we did for Mother's Day. It was very well received by all of the parents and took a solid week to get done! We started out by painting the pots. We used washable paint, which I do not think I will do next year. It soaked into the terra cotta pots and we had to do eight layers of paint. (Not that the kids minded having to paint so much, just that I started to get concerned they wouldn't be done in time!). The handprints are done with Crayola's Model Magic. This is very lightweight, which worked great for our purposes. The kids painted dowel sticks green.

Then I set up to getting them all put together. I ran through three HUGE hot glue sticks. The flower petals and leaves are foam. I have the dowels sticking in the pots using a styrofoam block. After I took this picture, I got the bright idea to use my multitudes of Easter Grass to stuff them and cover the styrofoam.

I love them and we got a ton of compliments on them. I think I'll do it next year, too.

Ribbit Ribbit

Don't mind my sideways picture. Yesterday we learned about how frogs eat bugs. We made these really adorable paper plate frogs. The kids painted both sides of the paper plate green, I helped them fold it down the middle. We glued on construction paper eyes and I helped them cut a hole for the "tongue." It's just one of those party favor things. I couldn't find plain red though! Ours say "Wildcats" and are from high school musical, lol. After they were finished, we took a walk around the school to blow out our long, sticky tongues and catch bugs.

I can't believe I only have three more weeks with these kids before the school year is over!

Stripey fish!

I forgot to take after pictures of this one. We have been working on simple patterns lately and our new May theme of water afforded the opportunity to make pattern fish! I gave the students two colors of paint, showed them a few patterns, and said "Now, can you make a pattern?" Almost all of them did really well. Even when the pattern wasn't clear on the plate they were painting, it was clear to me that they were doing one stroke in color A, then switching to one stroke in color B. After the paint dried, I cut out the white parts of the plate. The students added a side fin and a tail fin and we hung them up in the hallway from the ceiling. My neighbor and I are aiming to create a school of fish going down our hallway.