Brain Puzzles

We are learning how our bodies work this week, and today was all about the brain! I found a great picture of the different brain parts from The Crafty Classroom.

I wanted one that was black and white, though, so I traced it onto another piece of paper.

Then I cut it up into 5 sections. I put the colored copy on the art table as a guide and the kids put the pieces of their brain back together.

Once they had it together, they used a glue stick to attach it to a piece of construction paper.

(Such concentration that little girl has!) Then the kids colored their brains with crayons.

 

I told the kids that the one thing I want them to learn about the brain is that it's the boss of the body. So all day long they were saying, "The brain is the boss of the body!" We'll see if they still remember tomorrow.

Valentine Friends

Earlier this week we made little friends out of a bunch of hearts. I made the hearts with either heart-shaped hole punches or just a scissors. Then I cut strips of paper (about one inch wide) and folded them accordion-style. The kids got busy putting their valentine people together.

They first glued the arms and legs onto the back of the biggest heart. Then they flipped it over and glued on the hands and feet.

Lastly, they used the smallest hearts to decorate the face.

These little valentine friends turned out pretty cute!

I hung them from the lights, after taking down our dancing snowmen.

And here are the valentines I made my kids. It's the same saying that I used last year ("Blow me a kiss, Valentine!"), but instead of bubble gum I used bubbles.

I got the bubbles from Michaels. It was much cheaper than buying all the gumballs and it felt good not giving them more sugar!

 

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!



Scented Dot Art

So I was shopping at Michaels a couple weeks ago and found these cuties:

Scented dot stampers. They were a dollar each, so I picked one up in every scent they had. I waited until today to bring them out and show the kids. You know they love anything scented. So even though they've made dot art in the past, this was extra fun and special for them. They are small but chubby, so perfect for little hands.

They really enjoyed making cool designs with them.

And to top if off, one sweetie even tied it into our theme. We are talking about feelings this week and during circle time I showed the kids different faces and had them guess the feeling. Well, one little boy saw the faces on the bottles and said, "Look! Feelings!"

It was a nice added bonus!

Love and Kisses

I finally got my Valentine's Day display done in our hallway. I'm sure you've seen this many times over, but I'm sharing it anyway. I started by printing out a big chocolate kiss (found through a google image search),

tracing it onto card stock paper, cutting it out and wrapping it in aluminum foil.

Then I put red, pink and purple food coloring in little cups of corn syrup. The kids painted their kisses with the corn syrup.

I asked them to make designs instead of covering the entire kiss in syrup and they actually listened to me! Yay! (I didn't want them to take forever to dry.)

After two days of drying time, I thought they were ready to hang up. If you touched them lightly, they weren't sticky, but if you pushed on the syrup, it would leave a fingerprint. But I was pretty confident that the syrup wouldn't run down the wall after hanging them. (That has happened in the past!) So I added a tag to them with the child's name.

And I hung up the title "Love and Kisses" and displayed the candy kisses all around.

It was a fun project -- the kids love painting with things other than paint!

Floss-Painted Hearts

We are doing a dental theme this week, so yesterday the kids painted with floss! We did this activity last year, but this year I decided to turn it into a Valentine's Day craft to help decorate our room. So I put out 6 different colors of paint and added a piece of floss to each of them.

The paintbrushes were used to push the floss down into the paint, otherwise it would just sit on top. And we made sure to leave part of the floss out of the paint so we'd have something clean to hang on to. The kids just dragged the floss across their paper, which had a heart on it.

It made very skinny lines, but I thought it looked cool!

Then I cut them out and hung them on our door.

I was thinking of adding words to them, like conversation hearts, but I thought I'd screw up and mess up their beautiful art. So I left them alone.

Falling Hearts

I received an e-mail from CraftProjectIdeas.com asking if I'd be interested in receiving some free craft supplies to use with my class. Um...YES, PLEASE! I am always using my own money to buy things for my classroom, so every little bit helps. (Thanks, Rachel from I HEART CRAFTY THINGS, for recommending me!) I was very excited when I received my shipment and saw these heart felt stickers:

They came just in time for Valentine's Day projects! I've also seen these in craft stores, and you don't even need the self-adhesive hearts for the craft we did. Using glue would work just as well. I started by taping down the two ends of fishing line to the table. If you used string or yarn, just taping one end would be fine, but fishing line is very curly so we needed both ends taped. Then the kids picked 4 hearts and put them in the order they wanted them on their line.

Then they peeled the back off the top heart and put it upside down under the fishing line, so the sticky part was facing up.

I helped lift the line if they needed me to. Then they found another heart that was the same size, peeled the backing off and put it on top of the other heart, with the fishing line between the two.

I set this project up at a little table so two friends could work on it at a time because I thought they would need my help more. But they all did a great job and I hardly had to do anything! When they were done with all 4 hearts (using 8 heart stickers total), I cut the remainder of the fishing line off the bottom and hung them from our windows. I wrote their name on the piece of tape.

It turned out to be a very simple project that added a beautiful decoration to our classroom.

I like how the fishing line "disappears" and the hearts look like they are falling or floating!

**Linking up to the parties on my sidebar!**

Peek-a-Boo Groundhogs

I have a simple and cute groundhog craft to share with you today. I printed some coloring pages of groundhogs (found here and here), cut them out and had the kids color them.

Then each child got a half piece of white construction paper and drew either a sun or cloud at the top. (Actually, all my kids drew a sun, but they had the option of drawing a cloud.) For the bottom half of the paper, they covered it with glue and cotton balls to make snow. We just had a snow storm so we have plenty of snow on the ground now! But if you live somewhere warmer, you could easily make grass at the bottom by using easter grass.

When it was dry, I cut a slit right above the cotton balls and attached a big craft stick to the groundhog. At first, their paper just looks like it's a sunny day with snow-covered ground.

But when you slide the groundhog through the slit, up he pops, looking for his shadow!

 

The kids took them home and will find out tomorrow if what they predicted comes true!