Teaching Heart Giveaway

I always enjoy what Teaching Heart shares, but this really takes the cake!

"Teaching Heart ( www.teachingheart.net ) is hosting their annual back to school party on July 24th till July 30th. Each Day a new prize! Gift cards, Books, Teaching Heart Products, and more!!! Plus a free printable will be posted during the week. You need to visit the blog at; http://teachingheartmom.blogspot.com/
daily to check out the prizes each day and enter for the ones you want to win!!!"

Binding It All With My Bind-It-All

I just purchased my Zutter Bind-it-All machine from Custom Crops and have been playing a little bit. My first project was to make notebooks. I thought these would make great little gifts for Easter for my son's teacher and our daughter's daycare provider. I purchased some notepads from Target's dollar spot, removed the backing and cut my own chipboard. Using some odds and ends of Creative Memories card stock, foam stickers, ric rac, and twine from Jillibean Soup, I decorated the cover and personalized.

This would also be a great little thank you gift to tuck a gift card into for my paras at the end of the year!

Feelin' Creative

It is a well known fact that I am frugal. And I'm okay with that. Today, I was pondering through Pottery Barn Kids and found a cute butterfly mobile made out of paper. It was around $40 and that was enough to inspire me. It's not like theirs, but I like how it turned out and more importantly "Fancy Nancy" thought it was wonderful. Now my seven year old son is wanting one, so I am going to have to have to coat it with testosterone somehow.

I cut all the butterflies out with the cricut, used some beading thread to string them with some beads I had laying around. Then I made a wire halo with some jewelry wire and wrapped some beads on it with a finer jewelry wire.

I am pondering the idea of having students make a smaller version for spring. Eggs, flowers, and bunnies in pastel colors floating on strings......

Home Again

So, it seems my son has relapsed again with this fever and I find myself on "spring break" again! While this has nothing to do with my classroom, I am sharing a little project I made with my two children. I am not a baker. That is my first disclaimer. Growing up with a mother who could make and create everything (seriously do not remember a craft she wasn't successful at), and watching my two older sisters and brother be able to craft and create like her, can leave some inferior feelings. Baking is one of those inferior subjects for me.

I am trying hard not to pass that on to my children, so we made cupcake cones. Yeah, yeah, you've probably made them, but I did something my mother did not do in her forty plus years of cake baking and decorating career. I made......FONDANT! Marshmallow fondant to be exact. And I was somewhat successful. Click here for the recipe I used and I did use the dough hook on my Kitchen Aid mixer - way slick.

Because my assistant was a little short on patience and just wanted to get the sprinkles on (who can blame her?), we did some quick cones, took a quick pic, and they ate them up. Or rather, one ate the fondant, the other the cupcake. LOL

The Actual Twitter Board

We are up and tweeting! This has been a great way to get end of the day thoughts in for our closing. Since we are going to work on the concept of time, I am thinking I might have students write the time that they write their tweet underneath their text. I really appreciated the text above that says, "I WANT SUMMER!!!" I am on the same page.

Tweeting in the Classroom

I had the opportunity to listen to Kevin Honeycutt (http://www.kevinhoneycutt.com) speak this past Monday and wow! He was an amazing speaker that really motivates and encourages the use of technology in the classroom. One of the most important points I took home with me from his presentation, was how we need to teach our students how to use social networks appropriately and responsibly. One of his suggestions was to create a Twitter board and allow students to "post" their status/thoughts on laminated sentence strips. So, I brought that idea back and the students love it! Here is the header for our Twitter Board that I made using the cricut (and SCAL software). I will post pics next week of the whole board.

Gymnastics Banquet

One of our gymnasts told me this past season that "You can't get any classier than princesses." That just made me giggle, so for their awards banquet, I wanted to give them a classy princess party! I also found little plastic glass slippers at The Dollar Tree. I cut out little pink shapes like the ones next to the food, glued a toothpick to it, put the gymnast's name on it and put it in the slipper with some pink m&m's for their places at the table.

Celebrations!

For Valentine's Day, I wanted to do something a little different for the students. Beings this is our second year together, I wanted them to know how special they are to me. So, I bent the "healthy party food" rule and added chocolate. We had strawberries, raspberries, oranges, bananas, apples, and grapes with a chocolate fondue. We also made s'mores! I brought in a small microwave and we had a variety of toppings - chocolate, reese's peanut butter cups, vanilla wafers, oreos, graham crackers, and pink heart marshmallows (found those at the dollar tree!). Decorated with some tissue poms, oriental boxes from Target's dollar spot, and some cutouts I made on the cricut. When the students came in, they told me "It's beautiful!" Such a simple display, but they loved it!