Whaaaaaat?!?

I have been crocheting like crazy this week!  I originally saw these Despicable Me minion hats on Pinterest.  I absolutely love this movie as do my best friend's little boys!  I thought this would be such a great Christmas present for them!  I got my pattern from Elizabeth Mohsin.  It cost me about $4.00. The pattern comes with six different sizing options from newborn to adult.  The body of the hat would work with any hat pattern but I was interested to see how she did the eyes.  In retrospect, I could probably have come up with my own pattern but Christmas is almost here and this saved me some time. 

I tried to make each one a little different...if they have the same eyes then they have different smiles and hair.  I can't wait to see these on their heads!  Only one more week! 

You Can't Catch Me!

It was a gingerbread week in preschool!  Every day we read a different version of the Gingerbread Man.  The preschoolers used our story graph to compare the characters from each story.  We also compared the story endings.  I photocopied the story covers to make our graph.  

We read the following stories: 

• The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth
• The Gingerbread Man by Jack Hartmann (audio story)
• The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst
• The Gingerbread Cowboy by Janet Squires
• The Stinky Cheese Man by Jon Scieszka

 (I originally got this graph idea from Vanessa at Pre-K Pages.)

According to our "Which story was your favorite?" graph, The Gingerbread Girl was the favorite of the week. (The boys votes were split between the other stories while the girls all rallied together for the same story.)

Hand Print Wreaths

This week in the Art Center, the preschoolers made hand print wreaths.  We helped them turn their paper to make the circular shape.  They sprinkled glitter onto the wet paint to give the wreaths that extra sparkle! We used Aileen's tacky glue to attach the pipe cleaner bows. They are super easy and add a little more of the Christmas spirit to our classroom!

Classroom Tour: The Main Room

Click on the "My Classroom" page to view a slideshow of my main classroom!  I am lucky enough to have two rooms all to myself so I will work on posting pictures from my Centers Room soon. 

Bestie's Broncos Barrettes

My mom and sister have been bow and barrette making machines this week!  I found some Denver Broncos material in the scrap bin today and just had to make matching Broncos barrettes for me and my best friend, Trisha!  I had my mom show me a cloth flower barrette that she had been working on and just copied her design.  These were so easy to make.  It only took me a few minutes to make each one.

Can't wait to wear this with my Tebow jersey next weekend!  Go Broncos!

DIY Wall Decor

I saw some wall decor on Etsy at the Pretty Foldings shop and thought I'd try my hand at making my own.  I started by making paper flowers and butterflies as seen in my previous post.  I then painted an 11x14 canvas with black and white acrylic paint until I liked how it looked. 

 

I then hunted for some twigs outside on our property.  I used high temp hot glue to attach them to the canvas.  I originally thought about painting the twigs black but I liked their natural look better.

I used the hot glue to attach the flowers and butterflies.  I placed the top butterfly on the end of one of the twigs that is not glued down to give it a bit more dimension.  I am thinking about doing two more of these to line up across my bedroom wall.

  I took these pictures with my Droid so the quality is not the best and the lighting in our basement made the canvas look a bit grayish.

Gettin' My Paper Crafting On

My sister is visiting from New Mexico for the Thanksgiving holiday and we spent the day at my mom's house.  The morning immediately turned from browsing Pinterest to full on crafting in the basement.  While my mom and sister worked on hair bows for little girls, I was determined to learn how to make paper flowers after seeing a really amazing piece of artwork on Pinterest that incorporated canvas and paper flowers.  I found a pretty good tutorial for Simple Paper Flowers. 

I made my first flower with yellow printer paper and then decided to try some out of newsprint.  I found an old textbook from high school and began tearing out pages.  I also made a few paper butterflies and attempted several rolled paper flowers (these did not turn out the way I envisioned them). 

I'm hoping to pick up some canvas and turn these into some wall decor for my bedroom.  I will post a picture of the finished product if it turns out how I'm hoping.