SLANT and People Crayons

So someone came to our front door today, which we hardly ever open unless it is for pizza or someone who doesn't normally come over, and my SLANT box had arrived! Pam from Moments to Teach has sent me a great box full of wonderful tools to help me get started with my anchor charts adventure.

Look at all these awesome goodies! Thanks, Pam! I cannot wait to use it! 

Also, since it was 102F before noon today, my sweet 3 year old and I had a craft day. We made people crayons. We have made these before, but we made disk shapes. Here is what we used. 

You don't have to use crayola, but they work much better than other brands, especially if you mix colors. 

So we took the paper off all the crayons and broke them into pieces. Each person had 2 crayons worth of wax. 

Then we cooked them for 16 minutes at 250F. We let them cool for 30 minutes before I popped them out and an hour before we used them. 

Both my 3 year old and my 1 year old enjoyed using them, and they could grip them really well in a people shape. We had so much fun we had to make more, so we searched the house for two more packs of crayons and made mixed people. 

We just broke them all into little pieces in a bowl and filled all the people. We still used 48 crayons to make 24 people. 

We had fun, and it was so easy! Who won't like coloring with multicolored people?

Made it Monday (on Tuesday): Cookie Sheet Calendar

I know it is Tuesday,  but yesterday I left home at 8am and got home after 11pm and then had late late date night with the Hubby, so I never got the chance to post my Made It Monday.

This week, since my room is all robot theme, I made a new cookie sheet calendar. I love these, and think they are so cute. 

You need a cookie sheet, any size, a few different scrapbook papers that go together, mod podge, paintbrush, strong magnets (I like the neodymium super strong small magnets), cement glue (E6000 or something like that), ribbon, glass beads with a flat bottom, ruler, scissors and decorations like stickers, clip art, or cut outs.

First, determine how wide your cookie sheet is and how far up you want your calendar part to go. Divide the width by 7 and the height by 5. This is the size of each day rectangle. You will need 35. I used the medium cookie sheet from WalMart and so my rectangles were 2" x 1.25" each. I used 2 different papers for the calendar, gears and black glitter. Brush the mod podge on the cookie sheet and attach the rectangles. I would start fro the bottom corner and work up.

Then make day labels and month labels for the computer or draw them. I wrote the days and printed the months.

Mod podge the days above the calendar part and add a place on the top where the months can be attached. Next add embellishments like stickers or other themed things. I printed out the clip art the calendar matched and added them all over.

Laminate the months. Either attach magnets to the backs of each or make magnets to attach each t o the front. I was low on magnets, so I just made 2 matching magnets by clipping the thin wings off 2 brads and gluing magnets.

To make the dates, print off small numbers spaced apart so you can cut them out (I also printed off holiday pics for some, too). Don't forget a 25/31 and a 24/30 for those few months they are needed! Now mod podge those to the flat side of the glass beads. You will be able to see the number through the rounded side. Now use the E6000 glue to attach the magnets to the beads. The magnet goes on the paper side. Put glue on the magnet and on the bead and stick together. These need to dry for about a day.

The last part is to add a ribbon to the top so you can hang your calendar on your wall. Use the E6000 glue again, and attach both ends of the ribbon to the back side of the calendar. Now all your extra magnets and days go on the back while it is on the wall, out of view, and conveniently kept for next month. If you just made 2 magnets to hold the months and didn't put magnets on each month, add a library pocket to the back to hold them :)

Hope you like it and find it easy to make!

Monday Made It - Door Sign

I am joining the Monday Made It Linky from 4th Grade Frolics today. Click on the picture below to join!

Every teacher needs a cute sign above their door in the hallway. I don't know how many of our sweet kids check above the door to make sure they are in the right place before entering EVERY day. Since I changed from safari to robots, I had to change my door sign to match, too.

This was pretty easy and quick(ish) to make. I made it Saturday while the kids were napping. I took a piece of cardboard from one of the many Amazon.com boxes lying around and covered it in some robot fabric I found at Wal-Mart. I like using fabric or fadeless paper for my walls because they last longer and stay bright. I made sure I had enough to wrap around all the edges. On the back, it is folded over, attached with permanent double-sided tape, then hot glued. 

For the front, I found foam glitter letters at Wal-Mart (let's just save time and tell you everything was found at Wal-Mart) and glitter foam sheets. I hot glued the letters to the fabric, to make sure they would stay, and then I drew and cut out gears from the glitter foam sheets to match the colors in the robots. This was the most time consuming part. If you know me, you know the gears had to be perfect. I traced two different sized circles from each color and then I had to divide the circles into 12 even pieces. The back of the foam sheets was paper, so it was easy to draw on. This is where I am thankful for my Trig class from way back when (and you said you would never need it! Ha!). Then I drew a small line on each of the 12 lines and connected every other line with a curved one, like this:

Cut out the circle and on the bold lines. Each line is 30 degrees apart. I cut them out and hot glued them in place.

Voila! A nice, big, colorful above-the-door-sign (batman pajama legs not included)!

I cannot wait to show you next Mondays Made It. I am almost finished, but need a few more kid naps to get it done :)

Kiwi Crate Love!

So one of my teacher friends was looking for something to do for her sweet grandkids while they visited over the summer. She found this website, Kiwi Crate, that sends you a box once a month of activities to do for kids 3-8ish. I thought, why not? My daughter (3 years) loves crafts, and most of these are science based.

We are only 2 crates in, and we are having a blast!

The crate comes with just about everything you need inside for 2-3 activities. This month was Wonders of Water.

Each activity book has instructions on how to do the activity, plus ways to extend the craft you made, and links to more crafts you can do in the same category or with that activity you just did. This time, we get to make a sailboat (learning about force and wind power), make water colored animals (learning about mixing colors, and 2 science experiments, drops on a penny (surface tension) and clay boats (buoyancy). Each activity book has links to Kiwi's website for more on that topic.

We do these one activity at a time. Day one is one activity book's basic craft. Then we extend it after we make  it. Then stop. The next time we do something we go online and check out the extras for that activity book. When we finish those, we do another book. Each activity book can last us a week or more with the creating and extending. My daughter gets so excited about the science part (my little scientist!) that she has all sorts of questions and "esperiments" she wants to do for each one.

Have more than one kid? They have add on packs of supplies for siblings. You get the crate, but it has double the consumables so each kid has plenty. Check out the crate at Kiwi Crate!

I am just so happy we found something already put together for us to do that is fun and educational. As soon as we get through this crate, I will post about our experience with water! I try and make most things we do an educational experience from learning our alphabet while placing sugar decorations on a cake to turning our giant TV box into a rocket ship and blasting to the moon. Just so you know, almost half the nerdy things we do are my daughter's idea :)

The Rainbow Conundrum. Help!

My daughter (who turned 3 in February) needed some motivation to sleep in her own bed at night and not on the floor of our room. She said her room was scary, and I showed her all the pretty things her aunt and I painted on her walls and decorated. It is covered in owls and birds, pinks and greens, her name on wooden pieces and other things.

The quote was left from when it was her nursery, and I couldn't get myself to take it down, so we designed her big girl room around those colors. We found a matching wall hanging set that we bought, and then she got to earn it after eating meat at dinner. Each meal she ate some meat, she got another clip to hang her art on. Now she gets to change out her work when she eats what she is supposed to.

She has her name above her bed. We spell it every night.

Before this big girl room, she was still sleeping in her crib (she was 22 months old when we moved her out of it). Now that she had a twin bed, she was scared to be alone. We painted handprints on the wall next to her bed to remind her she is never "alone." If she got scared, just touch our hands. This was cute, and worked for a bit.

Then she couldn't sleep in her own bed because it wasn't "good for girls my age." So we painted lucky mushrooms by her closet door to help make it better. Evidently pink and green polka-dot mushrooms ARE good for girls her age.

We had also painted a large tree on the wall and I cut out owls and birds that matched her bed set and mounted them in simple frames to make them sit int he tree. I attached them with the 3M wall sticky stuff. Well, when one owl fell down in the middle of the night, that made the tree scary. I could put it back up, but she told me it would just fall down again. See where it took the paint out with it? 

Then she was doing alright in her room after I fixed the owl, but then she saw Monsters, Inc. We didn't think anything of it. She saw the new one at the theater with her grandma, so we watched to first one at home. She enjoyed the second one, but she couldn't sleep in her room with a closet door because monsters might come out and scare her. So her aunt spent the night in her room and scared all the monsters away. She left a note for proof :)

 Now we are at the rainbow. After the note, we laid in her bed and looked around at all the things in her room. I asked her to point out anything that seemed scary, then I explained what it actually was. She said she needed rainbows and sparkles to make her room not so scary. So I told her if she slept in her own bed from bedtime to sunlight for 5 days in a row, I would paint a rainbow and sparkles (the red, green, violet and clouds have glitter on them) on her door.

Well, today is day 6. She will probably sleep in her own bed, since she has been, but what can I do if she needs even MORE motivation? Am I bribing her too much or is it incentive? Is she playing me to get more things on her wall? Should I just make her sleep in her own bed without a reward? I am running out of room to paint things on her walls!