pinterest in the classroom

 

The families that organized our holiday party really did a tremendous job! Each child got their own supplies to create edible snowpeople and Christmas trees. The green frosting might have covered every inch of the children but it did not keep their smiles from beaming through!

thank you pinterest...

...and all you crafty bloggers out there who share your ideas! Last week we read Fletcher and the Falling Leaves and worked on all sorts of Thanksgiving fun found through pinterest!

 This fine motor activity was inspired by Twoodaloo. I used floral foam cut to fit one of our small wooden crates. The picks were made by me, using stickers from Michael's and construction paper. Out of all of these projects, this one took the most prep time but the children loved it! Though it may be that they really loves the sound of the toothpicks going into the foam. Feathers were great too!

 This awesome rainbow button turkey inspired by Raptor Mama. This one I did turn into a color matching game as well as the fine motor aspect of the buttons. My threes had a hard time at first but soon got the hang of it and played with it over and over again.

 This awesome clothespin turkey inspired by Pink and Green Mama. Thank you to mr. a-go-go for drawing me the turkey. I used scrapbook paper for the wings and a glitter paper for the base. I had wanted to do the color matching turkey but our local Michael's was out of rainbow feathers so I went with this instead focusing on the fine motor movement of pinch the clothespins.

And this semi-modern take on the classic handprint turkey from Things to Share and Remember. The children chose their own colors for their turkeys and I painted their hands. They drew in their legs and eyes and selected their beaks and waddles. The backgrounds were painted on the backs of cereal boxes and then hot glue to cardboard. They also painted their noodles for the handles. I love, love, love how they turned out!

make a heart shaped treat

This happy heart shaped cinnamon roll was made with a store-bought cannister of dough. Sprinkles were added on a whim. This could be a delightful project to shape with your kiddos depending on their age and expectations. Either way, sprinkles kind of make it happier. Grab a tube, preheat your oven and hop on over to scrumdillydilly for the diy.*

*I found this recipe on pinterest via Spice Blog. Enjoy!

pinterest party

 I have to admit I am quite happy that Pinterest exists. It keeps my desktop free of eye candy clutter and helps me organize thoughts and ideas for future projects, recipes, home decor and more. I've been working on collecting fun and easy projects to bring to the kiddos at the school I work at and even managed to put two of them in action. Now, I just need to find more fun to pin!

 

 

First up are cloud jars. Here is the pin and here is the original source. The kiddos had a blast experimenting with their eyedroppers water and shaving cream. It made for a great mess and lots of exclamations as they discovered their blue and yellow drops turned green once they ran together. The first day we did this, the fun took a a while to clean up. The second time, I placed a tray under each kiddo's jar to catch all the excess excitement. We also set up one enormous vase to work on together. Listening to the children plan and make predictions made all the clean up more than worth it.

 

Next up, I painted up a large batch of happy sticks a la this pin from Pure and Noble. I used acrylic paint in happy colors and picked up some magnetic tape from the craft store. I also used three large pizza pans from the dollar store to use as stations for the kiddos to play at. I had no idea what would happen. I imagined there would be some color sorting, maybe some arranging and then mostly some imagination play happening thus turning the sticks into money or tokens or what have you. Sure enough, a little of everything happened. One toddler really took a liking to the blue sticks and would gather them up to carry around. Another toddler liked to arrange all the sticks, one color at a time atop their pizza pan. The 3s and 4s gathered up all the sticks and put them in the backs of their cars. So not a total bust.

I am looking forward to putting more Pins into action, This week I think I will do this one and next week we'll tackle the cloud dough. Happy pinning!