Cow Rattle

So I am obsessed with socks. I love to wear crazy colored socks all the time because my idea is that no matter how crappy my day is, I can always think about how my socks don't match anything else that I'm wearing and it makes me smile. It's like my dirty little secret. :) So anyways, that being said I always buy new socks so I've decided to start recycling my older ones.

Last year, my mother (knowing my obsession with socks) bought me some bizarre socks with animals on them. Well, although they were cute, they were too narrow for my big old feet so I decided to try recycling them.

I took the cow sock (Yes. I actually said COW SOCK.) and I cut it off about half way. I added a plastic Easter egg with beads (taped securely) and put it in the toe of the sock, added the rest of the sock as stuffing, and sewed it shut, added little ribbons to the top for flare.

And TA-DA!!! Ballerina has a cute cow rattle!!

**This was placed on Social Saltuation: Saturday Social **

Carole

Teacher Appreciation Gifts

So I am officially finished with Finals and have completed this semester with straight A's!!! Woot! Tonight I finished putting together the teacher appreciation gifts for Sugar & Peanut to take to school tomorrow. I realize it's the end of Teacher Appreciation Week but at least I got them done during the same week. That's quite an accomplishment considering all the testing I've been doing.

In honor of Earth day (still...) I decided to make the gifts out of recycled products. I used the bottoms of Dr. Pepper bottles and cut "leaves" out of the side of the bottles. Then I sprayed them with red and green spray paint made especially for plastics.

After they dried, I hot glued the leaves on top of one of the bottle bottoms and added some green beads to the very top for asthetic purposes.

Then I added some red tissue paper and candy. I suggested Smarties to my kids to show how "smart" they have become thanks to their teachers.

And finally I put the bottle bottoms togethers and.....TA-DA!!!

I got this whole idea from a website I happened across one day but I can't for the life of me find it again to post a link. GRR!! But anyways, Happy Teacher Appreciation Day!!!

Carole

Earth Day!!!

Have I mentioned how much I love my children? Well I do! They are the most fabulous and caring kids I've ever known. Today was Earth Day and in celebration I had planned a few craft activities and a trash walk around our city park. Unfortunately, due to my Ballerina having an upset stomach, we only got to do one craft activity and the trash walk was cancelled.

The activity that we did get to do was making bookmarks out of paint swatches. My daughter did most of the work at my verbal instruction. We took blue and green swatches and cut a hole out of one of the colors, put the other color behind it  and taped them together. This was a representation of our planet. Then we hole-punched the top and added a blue & green ribbon. Cupcake was so excited about this that she made one for everyone in her class and took them to school this morning! Peanut & Bulldozer could care less about the craft.

Well tonight, due to miss Ballerina the rest of our plans were cancelled. But did that stop my kids from celebrating Earth Day in their own way? Nope. They went and created this:

It's the Recycle City!!! I know this because they posted signs.

This is the most elaborate and amazing city that I've ever seen and it's mostly made out of discarded items that they found.

The Police Station

The Bank

Walmart





Dollar Tree (Mommy loves this place)

Grocery Store

Hospital

City Hall & Lowes

A Residential House

My little creators with their Mall.

How stinkin' cute was Recycle City! I love them!!

Carole

Getting ready for Earth Day!!!

Earth Day is tomorrow so my house has been busy doing recyclable crafts. I have to admit that as a student teacher, I'm asking my own kids to do them before thinking about adding them to my future curriculum. (Is that smart or bizarre? I can't decide.) Anyways, moving onto the crafts...

Since I'm planning on having my own classroom one day and currently I have an infant with tons of empty formula cans, I decided to recycle those cans to hopefully put them to use in my future classroom.

This was my first time using Mod Podge. My dad is a pretty crafty person and assured me that I would be fine but it was not easy to get the wrinkles out. If anyone has any suggestions for this, I would love to hear them.
Even with the occasional wrinkle, I did a pretty good job and even got carried away with the whole project.

I think they look cool.

Also in celebration of Earth day, my kids got involved by making coffee filter Earths. The kids got around the table and I gave each of them a paper plate and a coffee filter. I put a pile of washable markers in the middle. Since we were making the Earth, I gave them blues, greens, and a few yellows.

They had a blast. Bulldozer (my 2 year old) was acting as if it was his birthday or something. He giggled the entire time while occasionally missing his coffee filter completely and coloring his hands. After they colored as much as they wanted, I took their paper plate and sprayed it with water. About 4 sprays worked well.

After I sprayed, we watched the colors spread slowly across the coffee filter. Then I set them out to dry.

I let them dry completely. It took most of the evening. We just left them alone until after dinner so it was about 3 hours total. After they dried, we glued them to black construction paper and wrote their names on the bottom of the page.

I made Ballerina's for her since she's only 3 months old. LOL! I have to say that I think Peanut's Earth turned out the best. It was full of vibrant colors and in fact, all he did was color very thick in the center before getting tired of coloring but the water spread the colors beautifully.

I have about 3 more Earth day activities planned and we have 2 days to complete them so I"ll be adding more.

**In other news, I still have yet to complete any of my weekly goals but I don't have any classes on Friday so maybe I'll at least get one or two completed then. We'll see!**

Carole