Healthy Teeth Activity

Continuing with our healthy teeth theme, today we sorted pictures of food into healthy and unhealthy piles. I found this idea at From the Hive. I had asked the kids to bring in pictures of their favorite foods for this activity. I also brought in a bunch from the newspaper for those kids who forgot.

I cut big teeth from paper and drew on either a smiley face or a sad face. I also left some blank in case the kids wanted to make their own faces.

Then they started gluing the pictures on the appropriate tooth.

The kids really seemed to enjoy this activity and stuck with it for a long time!

Marshmallow Mouths

This week we are learning about the importance of healthy teeth. I brought in some mini marshmallows, which immediately peaked the interest of all the kids. First they painted an open mouth on their paper. Basically, a big pair of lips.

Then they glued on the marshmallows to look like teeth.

I must admit, a few of them were a little scary!

But it was a fun activity. Another exciting thing we did was paint with toothbrushes!

The kids had a wonderful time!

Hot Air Balloons

For my Valentine's display, I cut out hot air balloon shapes from white paper.

Then I put marbles in cups of paint.

The kids marble-painted their balloons.

They turned out very cool, although they did crinkle and curl as they dried so I had to flatten them for about 24 hours.

I cut out little baskets and asked each child who she or he loved. I wrote their answers on the baskets.

I asked one child who he loved, and without a moment's hesitation he said, "Elephants." It was so cute! Anyway, I used yarn to attach the baskets to the balloons.

I dug out some clouds that I made years ago which had "Love is in the air" printed on them.

I put those up in the hall with all the hot air balloons.

Everyone is enjoying reading the baskets! I wish I had printed out a picture of the child to put in the basket. That would have been adorable!

YAH: Valentine Decor

My Young-at-Heart crafts today all have to do with Valentine's Day. Although there are four separate crafts, they were all simple and done in one day, so I'm sharing them in one post. First up, the easiest:

I've seen a few of these around the web and decided to make my own. I just printed out "all you need is" and "is all you need" with a big gap in the middle. Then I used some red self-adhesive letters (which I already had from a different project) to spell out "love." I put it in a little frame without the glass.
Next up is another easy project. I bought the block-word Love and some red glitter glue.

I was going to try to make stripes, but I knew I'd mess it up so I went with polka dots instead.

I also bought some Xs and Os from Michaels. I decided to cover them with some valentine paper I had in my closet.

I first used some acrylic white paint to cover the sides and backs of the letters.

After deciding which paper to use, I traced a larger version of the letters onto the paper and cut them out. Then I painted on some glue (thinned out a bit with water) and pressed the paper on. When it was dry, I trimmed the paper.

I just leaned them up against the wall. I put my frame next to the letters, added a few other things, and my entrance table was complete.

The only problem now is I get that song stuck in my head every time I see this! I wouldn't mind so much if I knew more words to the song, but those in the frame are the only ones I know!
And finally, I bought some thin wooden hearts. I poked holes in the top of them by hammering a nail in and pulling it out. I'm sure there's a much better way to do this, but it worked fine for me.

I used my red and white acrylic paint to cover both sides of the hearts. I made 4 red and 4 white.

When they were dry, I used more paint to write words on them, like conversation candy hearts. I used red and white ribbon to hang them from the curtain rod in my living room.

All you need is love, love, love....

Groundhog Day Craft

I saw this cute groundhog craft here and decided to try it out with my kids. First I painted one foot brown (and man, were those kids ticklish!) and made a footprint.

When it was dry, they made a face and added some sky, either sunny or cloudy. For the ground, I gave the kids a choice. My inspiration picture had grass, but here in the Midwest the ground is covered in snow for Groundhog Day. (Well, usually. This winter has been very, very mild and there is hardly any snow out there.) So I let the kids choose if they wanted to make grass with hand prints...

or snow with cotton balls.

I also printed out the poem and they glued it to their picture. It says:
Here's a little groundhog, furry and brown.
He's coming up to look all around.
If he sees his shadow, down he'll go.
Then six more weeks of winter -- OH NO!

Today was a cloudy and foggy day, so no shadow was seen by our local groundhog. Early spring it is!

Silhouettes (With a Twist)

We are experimenting with shadows this week to get ready for Groundhog Day tomorrow. The kids brought flashlights to school today and we made shadow puppets, which were a lot of fun! I also used the flashlights to trace their profiles on a piece of white paper. I used a pencil, because if they move just a tiny bit you almost have to start over, but I traced over the pencil line with a black Sharpie.

But instead of just cutting these profiles from black construction paper, as cool as that looks, I wanted the kids to do something different. So they each colored a coffee filter with markers. Then they put the filter on top of their profile and sprayed it with water.

They loved watching all the colors bleed together! After about 10 minutes, I took off the coffee filters to reveal the beautiful designs they left behind.

Then I cut them out and taped them to black paper. This really made them stand out.

I also put a little card in the upper left-hand corner with a question mark on it. I wanted the parents and other teachers to guess whose profile it was. Then they can open the flap to see if they are right!

My favorite part was hearing the kids talk about the colors. Several of them noticed they had colors on their paper that they never colored with originally! For instance, this girl only used purple and green markers. She was so surprised to see yellow after we took the coffee filter off.

Oh, I just love it! I wish I had traced their entire heads instead of just the faces, but it was hard for them to sit still!