Earth Day!!

I love Earth Day projects -

I love to reuse, recycle and repurpose anyway plus I love the colors on most of my Earth Day projects. Turquoisey blue and green.  Here are some old favorites.
 

This one I've done for years ( I mean YEARS!) Any age can do it, too. Even 2 year olds. If you can hold a Crayola water based marker you can do this :) Place a coffee filter on a piece of waxed paper and smooth it out so it will lay flat. Then you just scribble with markers in blues and greens. That's it - really. Then the children simply spritz the coffee filter with water using a spray bottle set to the finer mist - not stream. The water based markers "bleed" and create an Earth that looks like you are viewing it from space! Let it dry and then you can laminate it if you like and hang it up on display. ( I think you could make a whole Solar System this way by varying the marker colors and cutting the coffee filter to appropriate size- Let me know if you do.)

At church we celebrate Earth Day as Creation Day and one of our all time favorites is 

Creation Day Snack Mix.

I am the queen of snack mixes ( Thanksgiving, Christmas, Fishes and Loaves, Daniel and the Lion's Den - you name it!!)

I like for the children to make their snack mixes so I line the ingredients up assembly style and put different " scooping utensils" in each item. On the sign in front I put the number of scoops they should put of each item ( and they can always choose to omit an unwanted ingredient!) Since it's a snack mix it really doesn't matter if the directions are followed perfectly:) I give them a cup or baggie and they fix their own snack.

This is the sticker that I print and we stick it on the baggie that the mix goes into. We usually make one to eat right away and one to take home and share :) YUM!
( *on Day One I use mini Oreos and I twist them apart so the white cream shows as the "light" and I separate a big bag of m&m's by color for the different days.)
Be  green  for Earth Day!!

Painting and Looking Forward..

I've been painting and ...

I'm looking forward to teaching ( F-U-N with the ABC's again) at a preschool teacher training workshop in Carrollton, Georgia on Saturday. It's being hosted by Tabernacle Baptist Preschool and it's always fun to be with a large group of teachers- very energizing!! A bonus is that I'll get to squeeze in lunch with my college girl, Mollie!!

Here's a little glimpse of "my bag of tricks"-

projects, ideas, tips, favorite books, recipes and more.

PS- regarding the little signs I've been painting- the ones about morning starting later are not for me :)  They are for friends! I am a morning person and I like to stay up late, too (I'm drinking my fave Earl Grey Tea out of a polka dotted mug right now). 

It's the middle of the afternoon that gets me...

PSS. remember the Sign for Heather?? I was right - she totally cracked up. I hung the one I made for us on our front door and every time someone came to our door I would open the door to laughter or someone saying, " I love the sign. We need one!!"

Spring Break!!

I am ready to look at this!!

I'll be back in a few days...

A Gnome and His Home!!

I am not a gnome in the garden kind of girl ( a pink flamingo on the sandy beach, maybe...) But everyone is loving the new movie and I really like polka dots so the cute little mushrooms appeal to me. It got me to thinking about a doing a little afternoon art camp and

A Gnome and His Home came to mind! Or A Gnome and Her Home... 

Some of the little girls wanted to make "girl gnomes."

 All very cute and very easy. A fun project for a birthday party.

I glued a small saucer to a clay pot ( with Liquid Nails and let it dry 24 hours) to make a little "pedestal." My Wal Mart had these nice taupy brown clay pots and I thought they'd look nice with the moss and natural items as well as the red mushrooms and gnome hats. I purchased little birdhouses from JoAnns' for a dollar and cut off the perches. I bought the pointy top birdhouses because we thought gnomes and their pointy hats would fit better :) We used a scrap of black peel and stick fun foam to make a doorway - we placed it over the birdhouse hole and pressed it on. The gnomes are made from the little turned wooden people that come in bags of 8 at Hobby Lobby. They are less than 40 cents each. 

Then the gnome got a coat of paint and a triangle of felt for the hat. The boy gnomes got a white felt beard and girl gnomes got yarn hair. The mushrooms were made from a small amount of air dry clay. ( We used Crayola Model Magic- I love the stuff because it takes paint so well and it's easy to use and it's white !! ) We used a roll of sheet moss that I purchased for 1/2 price with a coupon at JoAnn's to line the saucer. I had a class of 14 so I needed the whole roll but Dollar Tree had small bags that would do one or two gnome homes. Then we just started gluing on twigs, itty bitty pinecones from my yard, scraps of the moss and leaves from some old silk ivy vines I had saved for crafting. We put the gnomes, their homes and some little rocks and branches in the pedestals and the Gnome and His Home was complete. They are super cute and the children loved making them and using all the natural materials - free, so they could use all they wanted. We used Tacky Glue to hold all the chunky natural materials on the houses. They could be displayed on a protected porch for Spring but wouldn't hold up out in the yard. That would require close adult supervision to use a waterproof glue.

The clay pot and saucer were less than $2.00 for both, the gnome was 40 cents, the birdhouse was $1.00. If you don't have moss around the house it is $1.00 for more than enough at dollar tree. I had the scraps of felt, yarn and fun foam. The rocks, pinecones and twigs were free. I had air dry clay but a small bag is a couple of dollars at Hobby Lobby and would be enough for a ton of mushrooms. You could use bread and a little white glue to make bread dough if you didn't want to buy Model Magic or create mushrooms from found objects. ( A champagne bottle cork looks just like a mushroom when painted but I didn't want to use those at work - for obvious reasons! )

The creative possibilities are endless and it's fun to make miniature little environments and play with them. When the children left with their finished Gnomes and Homes the adults were wishing they had come to the class!!

** Disclaimer continues... I'm still having "issues" when I try to post pictures and with spacing but at least I got something posted this try. I had more pictures to go with this post but they just wouldn't load. I'll keep trying but meanwhile please forgive the weird spacing on my posts!!

Disclaimer!!

I am sorry to say that I have been trying to catch up on my posting for 2 1/2 days now and Blogger just won't let me upload pictures - one or two will work and then I can't get anymore to add to my post!!! URG!! :(

I am trying to get help/figure it out!!

I have some cute things waiting in the wings.....

Anyone ever have this problem??? All help will be appreciated. 

I have deleted and started over, walked away and come back, growled at my computer, gone to Blogger Help... nothing has worked yet.

Is it me?? Is it Blogger??

Instead of Chunky Monkey it's Blocky Bunny !!?!

This guy is nothing more than a scrap block of wood - 2x4 to be exact- about 5 inches long or so. They were leftovers from a DIY project. 

I started out by hot gluing two of those little wooden "ice cream spoon" shapes on the bottom. Don't they look just like rabbit's feet? :)

Two more for arms and two more for ears. Already it looks like a bunny. 

The children painted it white.

A pink button nose, of course. I added some wire for the whiskers but they could be drawn on with Sharpies. Same with the eyes- buttons or little dots made with a marker. Cute either way. And a little white pom pom bunny tail- a must.

Someone gave me a box full of mini galvanized buckets - I love galvanized in any shape or size!! I decided we could have the bunny carry a bucket instead of a basket. We used Crayola Model Magic clay to form a carrot around a short piece of green pipe cleaner.After the carrots hardened we painted them orange and tied on scraps of fabric or netting.

This is one cute Easter guy and he cost pennies to make ( Therefore leaving more in the budget for Reese's Easter Eggs and other yummy Easter candy.)

I have a few unpainted bunnies leftover. I think I may paint the next one with polka dots.

So hop to it and make a blocky bunny!

Nothin' but sweet talk...

Just a little prop from my Sunday morning children's lesson about saying nice things!

I have made these for Valentine's day as well. (then it's a Kiss!!) 

Just cute and simple- a die cut (lips) and a lollipop stuck through the middle. I knew I was handing them out to the children so I went ahead and taped the lollipop to the lip cut out. (You could easily hand cut the lips as well.)

Just to remind us ... Nothin' but sweet talk should pass through our lips!