Horton Hears a Who

I saw this cute craft (seen here) that was just a pom pom glued to a pipe cleaner with the words "We are here!" glued to the pom pom. I loved it. However, you need a hot glue gun to attach everything and that's not very child-friendly. I'd be making the crafts instead of the kids. So I changed it a bit.

I bought a couple bags of the sparkly pom poms and found some green pipe cleaners.

I know Horton's clover is pink, but they only came in multi-color packs and I didn't really care if the clovers were all different colors. I also found a coloring sheet of an elephant holding a flower and used that as a template for my elephant trunk. The kids colored it and glued it to a small piece of blue paper. They didn't put any glue on the tip of the trunk because that would need to be lifted up later.

Then I cut the pipe cleaner in half and the kids put it on the trunk. I tried using Elmer's white glue for my example and it was not working well with the pipe cleaners, so I told the kids I would hot glue it later. For now they just set it on the paper so they would know where to put the pom pom.

Then using regular Elmer's glue, they attached a big pom pom to the paper, right at the top of the pipe cleaner. They also glued on the words, "We are here!"

The kids were given the option of using smaller pom poms to make a field of clovers at the bottom of the paper. Elmer's glue worked fine for that, although you need to let them be until it's completely dry.

In the afternoon, when everything was dry, I used a hot glue gun to attach the top of the pipe cleaner to the paper. That's all it needed because the rest of the pipe cleaner was wrapped up in the trunk! Then I used stencils to write "A person's a person, no matter how small" and displayed them in the hall.

Ooh, I just love it! And the bright colors are getting me excited for spring!
We also had a froggy party today to celebrate leap day! The kids could bring in anything frog-related or dress in green.

It was a great excuse to wear my froggy slippers to work again!

**Linking up to the Dr. Seuss linky party at Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas!**

The Cat in the Hat's Thing One and Thing Two

I found this adorable craft here and tried to copy it today. *Tried.* I have 15 kids, all by myself, and this morning was just too crazy to get two hand prints from everyone. Especially when the hands had to be positioned just so. I did two kids and I was done. So then I decided to trace their hands.

For the top hand, I left off the thumb. For the bottom hand, the middle three fingers were together, but I didn't trace around the middle finger. The thumb and pinky were spread apart from the other fingers. Then at the art table, the kids traced the lines and colored them in. They also drew in a face.

I cut out white circles and wrote THING on them.

The kids wrote either a 1 or a 2 and glued it to the belly.

This was so much easier for me and they still turned out cute! Plus, each one looks a little different this way.

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

We started our Dr. Seuss unit today! Each day we will do a craft to go along with one of his books. So today we did a fish craft, even though One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish is really only about fish at the beginning. Oh well! We did bubble wrap painting, which is an oldie but a goodie, right? So the kids first painted bubble wrap,

then gently pressed it onto a white piece of paper,

 then peeled it off.

When it was dry, I took a fish template I had and traced it onto the paper and cut it out. Then the kids added a big wiggle eye.

I probably could have drawn the fish before the kids painted, but this worked fine. At the end of the day, the kids painted a huge piece of paper.

When it dried I added the fish, a sandy bottom and some seaweed!

I asked kids to bring in Dr. Seuss books this week and I was surprised that some brought in ones I haven't read before!

It was a nice change!

"Kids Say" Linky Party

Jeannie at Kindergarten Lifestyle is having a linky party for all the funny things kids say! Isn't that a cute idea? I did a post last summer about that, but here are my top two favorites.

That last one was said by a 5-year-old boy to my co-teacher!

Wagon Wheel Pasta Prints

Some of you may have noticed I've been "quiet" much of this week. We are doing The Five Senses, and since I've already shared that unit, I didn't blog about it again. I have a different group of kids, so I pretty much did the same projects as last time. Like textured finger painting:

And corn syrup art:

But I wanted to throw something new in, just for fun. I didn't plan on it going with the theme, but it could easily be worked in. I've always liked the look of wagon wheel pasta, and I thought it would make fun prints, but how would the kids hold on to it? Corks, of course! So I took some wagon wheels,

and hot-glued them to corks. (The only reason why I used colored pasta is because that's all I had!)

I had no idea if this would work. I googled it, but didn't find anything. So when I got to school this morning, I tried it out and it worked great! I was thrilled!

So the kids got to work dipping the corks into paint,

and stamping it on their paper.

I think I had more fun than the kids!

The corks and pasta and glue held up great. Now I'm trying to come up with other things to glue to corks to make my own stamps!

Oh, and in other news, we finally got some snow. It was so pretty, but melted fast.

**Linking up to Sharing Saturdays, Living Life Intentionally, Show-and-Share Saturday and No Time For Flash Cards!**

Presidents' Day Crafts

We talked about presidents today, particularly George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The kids learned about them when we went to Mt. Rushmore, but I just wanted to refresh their memories. For our crafts, I had seen a few president crafts that I liked (here and here) and so I kind of took what I liked from them, added a few of my own ideas, and came up with these:

As the kids were dropped off in the morning, I had them paint a small paper plate with peach paint. (Actually, it was white with a little orange mixed in.) They were all dry by the time we got together for art time. First they drew faces on with markers.

Then they had to choose if they wanted to make Washington or Lincoln. For Lincoln, I had black rectangles cut from construction paper. One was big and tall and the other was skinny. I also had black tissue paper squares and glue.

The kids glued the rectangles together to make a hat and then glued it to the top of the plate.

Then they scrunched up the tissue paper, dipped it in glue, and put it on the rim of the plate for Lincoln's hair and beard.

For Washington, I cut out small blue hats and strips of yellow paper. I also put out cotton balls for his hair.

The kids glued the hat to the top of the plate, then glued the yellow strip on. I trimmed them after they dried. Then they glued cotton balls to the sides of the plate.

Then I asked the kids what they would do if they were president and wrote it on a scroll (found here). Most of the kids didn't seem to understand the question, but I wrote their answers down anyway. Here is one of my favorites: What would you do if you were President?

Then I displayed them in the hall for everyone to see.

I wasn't planning on doing any crafts for Presidents' Day* and had only decided last night that I probably should. I wasn't sure I could get everything ready in time this morning, but it all worked out and I think they turned out pretty cute!

*I read several news articles today about how it isn't Presidents' Day, but rather Washington's Birthday, and how we should really only be celebrating and honoring George Washington. I never heard that before. Hmmm...

YAH: Silhouette Art

Here's a quick Young-at-Heart post to show you what I made my husband for Valentine's Day. We normally don't exchange gifts, but I wanted to do a little somethin'. We have two cats who are the loves of our lives,

and for awhile now I've wanted to make some sort of silhouette art with them. So I've been taking pictures of their profiles and found two that worked perfectly. I used a greeting card software to make the pictures the right size, then I printed it out (just in black and white), cut it out, flipped it over, positioned the heads just right and traced it on black card stock paper, which I already had on hand.

Then I cut out the heads. I found a floating frame that I bought years ago and never used, so I put the silhouettes in that. My plan was to hang it in our bedroom, which has Victorian red walls. The black against the red looks great!

Of course, I could not get a picture head-on because of the flash, so I apologize for the bad angles.

It took me about 10 minutes and didn't cost me a thing! Our cats do this nose-to-nose thing often, but I can never get a picture of it. So this was the next best thing. Oh, and here is what my husband got me:

Ahh, be still my bamboo heart :)