Items filtered by date: November 2011

• Using cardstock, make a template from my master.
• Children trace it onto a lunch bag and cut out a head and ears for their reindeer.
• These can be pre-cut for younger students.

•  Flip the lunch bag so that the bottom of the bag is showing.
• Glue the head so that it is in the middle of the bottom of the bag.
• Glue the ears at right angles in the top corner of each bag.

• If the children would like to add inner ear accents with a brown crayon, have them do it before they glue them down, so the creases of the bag don’t show through.

•  Fold a sheet of dark brown construction paper in ½.
• Trace children’s hand on top.
• A room helper can cut these out for younger children.

•  I find that any student 5 or less has a difficult time with this and usually chops off a finger or two.
• By folding the paper in half you only have to cut one time and you’ll have two “antler” handprints.

• The antlers look best with the thumbs on the inside.
• Point this “gluing fact” out to your students.
• Children glue their hand-antlers to the center top of their reindeer.

• Call students up to the glue-dot center and have them choose a color pom pom nose and a pair of eyes. (Red, brown, and black nickel-size pom poms all look great.)
• Give them glue dots and have them stick them to their reindeer.
• If they press their wiggle eye and the pom pom directly on the glue dot and then remove them, I find that this works well.

• Students carefully insert their hand and arm into their puppet and manipulate the head.
• Have students use their puppet when you read them a December story that has reindeer as characters.

Click on the link to view/print a copy of the reindeer lunch bag puppet

 How to use the reindeer puppets:

• Line up 10 students and sing 10 Little Reindeer to the tune of 10 Little Indians.
• Sing Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer.

•  10 In The Bed is also fun. Have ten children with puppets held above their heads, lie on the floor and roll off the “sleigh bed” one by one, til everyone has had a chance.
•  Have students count backwards and blast off to the North Pole with their reindeer.

• The Reindeer Pokey is another way to use this manipulative.
• Click on the link for a copy. Reindeer Pokey

• Have your students identify their various body parts by placing their puppet on their chest, hip, thigh etc.
• They can also show you various spatial directions with their reindeer by putting their puppet above, behind, to the left, to the right etc.

•  Naming their reindeer and then gathering in a circle where everyone gets a chance to introduce their puppet friend is also enjoyable and a great way to get quiet and shy children involved!

Be sure and pop in tomorrow to see how to make an adorable bag of reindeer noses!  The perfect little gift for your students to make, or a quick and easy gift for you to whip up and give to them!

1-2-3 Come Make An Adorable Keepsake Ornament With Me

Making fingerprint snowmen, is not my original idea.  Several mail rings I follow were talking about them, so I Googled snowmen fingerprint ornaments and found a dozen or so examples, thus I don’t know who to give credit to. The idea is to paint the top of a child’s hand with white paint and press it on a clear plastic or blue glass ornament. They then turn their fingerprints into snowmen by adding details. 

I know many teachers have 30+ students or teach 2 classes of Y5’s or K, so this could get a bit expensive, as well as tricky sending home something that could possibly break.  I thought why not try this with paper to see how it would turn out and the results were darling, inexpensive and extremely easy for a 4-year-old to work on.  You can jazz them up a bit by adding aluminum foil tops, flat-backed jewels and scrapbook paper hats! My hats are a triangle, square and oval shape, with rectangle brims, and the ornament is a circle, so you can have a mini-shape review and cover a report card standard. (Woo hoo!)  To make this easier, I also painted only the 1st 3 fingers.

Here’s How:

• Make a circle template and run it off on blue construction paper.
• Have children cut out their circle ornament.
• Students write their name on the back.

• Glue a sheet of aluminum foil on cardstock.
• Make an ornament topper template out of cardstock from my master.
• Trace it on the aluminum foil card stock.

• Give each student a topper to cut out.  You may want these pre-cut for younger children, or to expedite the project.
• Students glue the topper to their ornament.
• Hole punch the top and put a reinforcement hole over it.

• Add a yarn tie so they can hang their ornament on the tree.
• Allow children to choose 3 flat-backed jewels and have them stick them across the topper with glue dots.

• Paint students first 3 fingers (4 if they have a small hand) and the very top of their palm with white acrylic paint.
• I use metallic white because it gives an opalescent frosty glow.
• Have students count to 5 before you lift up their fingers.
• Set aside to dry. (Takes about 5-10 minutes.)

• Pre-cut hat pieces. One sheet of scrapbook paper per color, will be enough for an entire class. 
• I chose red, black and green paper.  You can’t really tell on the photo, but the paper is pin dot, striped, and printed.

• Children choose hats and glue them to their snowmen. (Review shapes with them as a mini-lesson.)
• Children use Flair markers to make eyes, noses, mouths, scarves, and buttons on their snowmen.  (Markers: Orange, black, green, red, blue, pink, & purple)

• Just an FYI: Tell your students to use DIFFERENT colors for each snowman’s scarf, and that their eyes should be different than their nose, mouth & buttons or you’ll have some students using one color for everything.
• You might want to let students practice making a snowman on a sheet of scratch paper while their ornament is drying and doodle different designs while they wait, then choose which one they like best.
• Make an example to show them so you have a sample.

Click on the link to view/print the snowman fingerprint ornament pattern.  So that parents will know that these snowmen are made from their child’s fingerprints, I also wrote a poem.  One year we made a different fingerprint piece of art and one mom didn’t have a clue that it was her daughter’s prints until someone happened to mention it.  “I loved it because she made it, now I love it even more!”

I put the color poem in DOC format so you can change the date in case you want to use it every year as an annual ornament activity. Click on the link to view/print the snowman fingerprint poem.  Otherwise, there are two fill-in-the-blank options in the packet. One is in color, the other is in black and white, so your students can color it themselves. 

If you still want to make the handprint idea into a gift, rather than just a paper keepsake. but are worried about the glass aspect of an ornament or want to keep the expense down, why not put their prints on a painted blue tin can and fill with peppermints or put their prints on a baby food jar and insert a tea light and tie a bow around the top, or make it into a picture frame and make the frames out of Popsicle sticks.

I've also made adorable banners by gluing a Popsicle stick to the top of a 4x6 piece of felt. The yarn hanger is glued under the Popsicle stick. These snowman prints would look darling on navy blue felt too.  Once the paint has dried they'd be easy to paint. Hats & scarves can be dabbed on with Q-tips.  These would look sweet suspended from a doorknob, making this a nice January craftivity when things aren't quite so hectic.

If you'd like to make a gift for grandma, ask mommy to donate a potholder.  You can get them in pairs at The Dollar store if you can handle the cost.  These prints would be adorable on those.  The Dollar Store also sells hot pad coasters in pairs in navy, red and dark green.  A Q-tip dabbed in white would add a nice little "blizzard" to round out the snow scene!

Thanks for visiting. I have a bit more shopping to do, so it's time to go warm up the car and brave the hustle bustle.  Wishing you a cozy day filled with wonder.

"Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wondered if getting a personal letter from Santa would help improve my students’ energetic December behavior (they are soooo excited!) and add to the wonder of Christmas.

So one afternoon 12 years ago, I decided to sit down and become Santa for an hour and I composed a letter for a boy and one for a girl, then I put each of my student’s names in, put some Christmas - printed paper in my copier and within 10 minutes I had 40 personal letters from Santa!

•  I designed some adorable North Pole address labels, + a sticker that said: A Letter From SANTA

• Xeroxed off a coloring page,
• Tucked in a sticker and took it a step farther...

• I bought a box of Quaker Oats at the grocery store and a big bottle of blue glitter and I made up an enticing batch of “reindeer food” for Rudolph and the gang.
• Craft stores sell the little clear Ziploc bags in packs of 100 for $1.49, so with spoon in hand I was in business scooping 1 spoon of oats and 1/4 teaspoon of glitter into a tiny bag. (Mix thoroughly.)
• A Christmas Stamp printed in green on the envelope was the finishing touch.

• I wrote everything with a green and red marker and tucked in a note explaining about the bag of glitter oats.
• Anything we send to students our school pays the postage for, so my total investment was around $7.00.
• Buy everything when things are deeply discounted after Christmas and you'll save even more!

• My students are thrilled. They get the cards in a day;  some of them even bring them in to share with me.
• The looks of excitement and the sparkle in their eyes make the extra time and effort definitely worth it!
• The thing that’s amazing is that each year that I’ve done this, is that right after the children receive their cards their behavior really does IMPROVE! I don't know if it's because of the card or not, and I don't really care, but I will continue to do it for as long as I teach. 
• I now send them to my grandchildren. 

• One year I had a mom ask if she could have a copy to run off for the rest of her children.  So now I keep extra's available for parents who request it.

• I have a girl and a boy version for you. Simply write your students names in and put the Christmas paper face down in your copy machine, or face up depending on your copier.

• For those of you who are subscription members you can print my Santa address labels by putting my master in your printer with a sheet of 30-count Avery labels in the paper tray (one sheet at a time.) My HP printer has the labels face down. Follow the directions for yours.
• The labels and Reindeer food insert are available in A Letter From Santa Extra's.

• Click on the link to view/print a copy of the Letter from Santa for Boys pdf and the Letter from Santa for Girls pdf
• I have it in a pdf or a doc so that you can easily add your own names if you want to type them rather than write them.  Enjoy!
• Letter from Santa for Boys doc and the Letter from Santa for Girls doc