Preschool: Christmas Crafts

Here is a round up of the Christmas crafts that I posted last year. Enjoy!

Antlers

 All The Pretty Lights!

Glitter Holly Berries

Glittery or Swirly Paint Ornaments

Preschool: Peppermint Candy Craft

Tis the season for all things Christmas! I LOVE it! I cannot tell you how tired I am of apple, leaf, fall and turkey crafts! I needed something new and exciting! This is my favorite month for crafts at preschool! I hope you enjoy this simple craft that uses fine motor and gross motor skills to complete!

Grab:
-A salad spinner that looks like this:
(It needs to have the handle that allows you to spin it, not the pump version.)

-Small paper plates that will fit inside. I used dessert sized.

-red and green paint

-cellophane or plastic wrap

-tape

-yarn

Go:

-Place the paint in the spinner. 

-Help children drop small blobs of red and green paint all over the paint. Make sure you get some        near the middle. 

-Place the lid on and have the children use the handle to spin the plate inside. 

-After the plates are dry, wrap each in plastic wrap and secure with tape on the back. I also tide the excess wrap on each side with a little red yarn to keep it in place. (My assistant and I did the the wrapping and tying part, but you could have older kids do that part on their own. 

Preschool: Pumpkins!

Here are a few pumpkin activities! 

What is inside a pumpkin?

I did this 2 different ways... first I stapled 2 paper plates together front to front. Staple a stem cut from brown paper to the top of one of the plates. Paint the paper plate with orange paint, mixed with a tad of glue and some pumpkin pie spice. When they are dry, open the "pumpkin" up and glue white yarn (pumpkin pulp) and dried pumpkin seeds inside. 

We also did this by cutting pumpkin shapes out of orange paper and gluing the insides on to it.

We also explored the inside of a real pumpkin! Dig, scrape and smoosh!  So much fun! 

We also did a pumpkin patch group project. I set out paper plates with orange paint and different size cups to dip in the paint. They stamped the 'pumpkins' onto the freezer paper. After they dried, we connected them with finger paint 'vines'.

Preschool: Colorful Indian Corn Craft

You will need:
-popcorn, popped
-ziploc bags
-powdered tempra paint (we used brown, purple, red, orange and yellow)
-yellow and green construction paper
-tacky glue

Divide your popcorn into portions per each color paint you are using.
Place each portion into a large ziploc bag, place about 1 TBSP powdered tempra per cup of popcorn into the bag and shake until coated.

Cut out ear of corn shapes from yellow construction paper and husks from green construction paper.
Glue the husk to the corn, then the popcorn to the ear of corn.

We twisted bulletin board and  construction paper up to make a large cornstalk and taped them to the wall.

Fall activities

I know, I know... I have sorta been MIA. School is back in session and I have hand my hands full to say the least. I wanted to share some fall activities that I did last year to hold you over until I put the new stuff up! Click the link under each picture of instructions and recipes! Enjoy!

Caramel Apple Craft

Mini Apple Pies

Mini Pumpkin Cheesecakes

Scarecrow Cookies

Monster Cookies

Only my FAVORITE COOKIE EVER!!

Mini Pumpkin Pies ( we made these in preschool!)

Can you tell I love MINI things! :) :) :) 

Fall Waffles

Pumpkin Tea Sandwiches

Well there you have it!  

Double Chocolate Mocha Cake with Mocha Icing

This really doesn't get much easier than this. We are starting off with a boxed cake mix. I used a Fudgey Chocolate cake mix. I mixed it up as called for with the exception of the water.  My cake mix called for 1 and 1/3 cup of water. I replaced it with 1 and 1/3 cup of coffee. This does not give the cake an overly coffee like flavor. In fact, it does something so subtle to it, you know something is different, but you can't place what it is. Definitely a good combo. I also added about 1/3 or so of chocolate chips. 

Bake your cake as directed. Let it cool completely before frosting it. 

Mocha Frosting

- 1/2 cup of butter, room temperature

-5 TBSP cocoa powder

-4 TBSP brewed coffee

-3-4 Cups 10x sugar

Mix butter, cocoa and 2 cups of 10x sugar together. It should form a lumpy ball. Alternate adding coffee and the remaining sugar. Stir until smooth. You can add more coffee or a little milk if you need to thin out the icing. Add more 10 sugar to make it thicker.  

Sit down with a nice chunk of cake and a cup of coffee and enjoy! :) 

Colorful Placemats

Needed:
Long construction paper
A variety of craft materials such as markers, glue, paper, scissors, stickers, etc
Contact paper

Decorate you placemat and laminate contact paper. Easy peasy summer fun!

My Favorite Things Party

Can you say SO MUCH FUN!!!! Have you heard of them???? They are such fun! The concept is this...  (you can change the price limit and # of gifts each person brings to your personal standards)

Each guest was asked to think of their favorite things in the $10-$15 range. Then they narrowed it down to one item and purchased 3 of that item. They packaged it and brought it to swap at the party. Each guest then went home with 3 new and different items from other guests at the party. We drew names to decide who went home with what.

What a neat way to share our favorite things with each other!

I also gave away some door prizes! Thanks to Amber for donating a Tastefully Simple Beer Bread mix (def one of my FAVORITE things!) and a cookbook! If you are interested in some of TS amazing products, like the beer bread.... check her website out   www.TastefullySimple.com/web//AAdeshina
I highly recommend... well everything they make! :) :) :)

Some of the gifts people brought were a $10.00 Starbucks gift card, an exercise video and Skinny Cow snacks, A large teacup filled with drink mixes, Mary compact filled with make up, and I brought Our Best Bites cookbook.

I also served my favorite lemonade in these cute mason jars with cupcake liners and paper straws. I found the idea here. The lemonade itself is something my aunt TC always makes. I just made a really strong lemonade from the Country Time mix. Then juiced about 2 large oranges into it. I added sliced oranges to the jars before serving.

I also made each guest a little favor bag with pretty baking liners, stick matches and gel paste food coloring. Some of my favorite baking items!

I used scrabble tile stickers and scrapbooking paper to turn these plain brown bags into pretty gift bags for everyone to carry home their goodies in. 

It was a great time! I look forward to another one! :) 

Summer Fun: Space Day!

Planning summer activities can be challenging when trying to appeal to a varied age group. I wanted to do something fun and themed  (cause who doesn't like a good theme?) that ages 2-9 could enjoy. I did not want the 2 year olds to be left out, but I did not want the older kids to be bored. So here is what I came up with:

I got out the craft bin that is filled with scrapbooking paper, glue sticks, scissors,  markers, crayons, paint chips and stickers. These are items that are for the kids to use during any craft. They are quite enthralled when they ask me if they can use something from the bin and I say, "Sure can, you don't have to ask, those are your craft things." Their eyes light up just like I gave them a million bucks.
I did, however provide each kiddo with a long sheet of black construction paper and foil star stickers. I also precut large circles out of wax paper and gave each kiddo one of those. We started by talking about the planets, the older children named the planets and how many there were. They felt like big stuff because they got to teach the younger ones. Then I showed them how to crumble the wax paper  to look like a moon, because our moon has big holes that we call craters.  I told the kiddos that they could use paper or paint chips to cut out planets, starts etc. I also brought up my special scrapbooking punches (circle and stars) for them to use.

They spent the next 40 minutes making their master pieces of the Milky Way. They were so proud of what they made and were very creative. I love seeing how unique each one was.

I love the astronaut!

 I know it is hard to see, but that is "the cow jumping over the moon!"

(To make the moons, we crumbled up a precut circle of wax paper and then smoothed it out before gluing it onto our papers.)

Then after we were all cleaned up, we decorated cupcakes to look like aliens! I colored some canned icing with gel food colors. I had the girls decorate and eat their cupcakes first, followed by the boys. I set our cups of raisins, chocolate chips, decorating icing, edible eyes, and candy melts. Again, having the choice to use whatever they wanted thrilled them!

So what did I learn? Saying "YES" as much as you can is very important. Let them use scissors. Let them do projects their way. Let them use lots of icing and candy. Praise their work. Watch their eyes light up. Make memories.