Summer Preschool

So, as I mentioned last week, I have been teaching a summer preschool program at our elementary school focusing on kindergarten readiness skills and I wanted to share some of my favorite things from this summer with you! Thanks to Pinterest, my new "teacher-hack" favorite is using pizza boxes to store art projects and work in the classroom! They stack perfectly, can be decorated a million different ways, and keep projects with paint or glue that need to be dried! Salvadore's Pizzeria in Erlanger, KY was more than happy to donate these for our group this summer and the parents LOVED going through the month's work on our last day!

We even added a surprise tic-tac-toe board on the bottom with colored masking tape so that they could play with toys or cut-out shapes at home!


Some of the projects from the summer that the families were able to see when they opened the boxes:

 Paper plate painted peacocks (we made these after we read "Elmer and the Big Bird" by David McKee) just because peacocks are prettier than bullying vultures.

 Here's a quick and simple, very colorful, Elmer the Elephant project with bingo dobbers!

 Farm animal projects after reading Doreen Cronin books about those tricky ducks and cows!

Our last week of summer preschool has been a blast!

Farmer Georgia from Sunrock Farm in Alexandria, KY visited on Tuesday with goats, lambs, a bunny, piglet, and baby chicks for the kids to play with. Here's my little princess brushing Ginger the lamb :) I just love this picture!

We also had a great time with Ms. Joan from the Cincinnati Zoo's outreach program on Wednesday! She brought Nessie, a Chinese Water Dragon, and Mozart, an African Grey Hornbill to teach about everyone's marvelous adaptations and what makes us each special!

What a fun summer! Can't wait to carry over some of these fun projects with my kiddos during the school year!

Our Fairy Garden

I've posted about our fairy garden on Facebook and Instagram, but since the plan is to make this blog for my classroom and mommy friends... I'm gonna post about it one more time :)

I had seen some beautiful outdoor fairy gardens and a super cute post about a greenhouse place across the country that specializes in selling miniature plants just for these miniature gardens! (I started following @laurakellydesigns on Instagram after following Mayhem and @2sisters_angie for a while now - both are very creative moms with fun and artsy ideas for kiddos! LauraKelly had just posted about the greenhouse...) So, I did a search on Pinterest for some indoor fairy garden ideas - most still called for real plants, which would have been an open invitation for our cat to play with the fairies... not a good plan... but I did see one with stuff planted in an old birdcage! That got me thinking about the birdcage I had sitting in my basement for the last five years. It was the card holder at our outdoor wedding in June of 2009 and hasn't been touched since:

 

Then I took my little girl to Joann Fabrics to gather some no-dirt-required plants and other ideas for little things we could add. We found a perfect little birdhouse, fence, stone pathway, moss, and flowers with a little help with Grandma and Papa! When we got home, I showed peanut some ideas for how we could put our stuff inside the birdcage so that fairies would enjoy the garden...

 Next steps: letting peanut paint the house while I figure out how to attach the birdcage to a stool so it would be at her height. I had to have some help from the hubby to screw the bottom of the cage to a block and attach those to the stool. When that was finally done and the tiny birdhouse became a fairy house, we started adding our pieces and creating the fairy oasis!

 Caylee's favorite part was adding the stone path and, even though I had to help with the hot glue, I think it turned out pretty great. When she went to bed, I explained to her that some fairies might see the house and decide to move in that night... no "Elf on the Shelf" mystery, just a fun little imagination game... and mommy stayed up for a couple hours adding little details and "planting" the fairies' plants - I definitely used an ENTIRE pack of glue gun sticks, but I had SOO much fun with this part of the project and couldn't wait for her to wake up and see if any fairies had moved in ;)

 Final touches before she saw it the next morning - a ribbon table skirt, birdies back to visit, and a sign on the door.

Since that first day, Caylee has decided to add two seashells that she painted at daycare and she told me that the stones were sleeping (like the trolls from Frozen). So, we picked up a couple bigger rocks to paint like trolls and add later :) We will continue to add things and change things around as the princess wishes, but I love that it is really all about boosting creativity and imagination! Such a fun, cheap, and easy mommy-daughter project!

Time for a new (out)look!

I've been so inspired by several mom-bloggers this summer thanks to my new addiction to Instagram! I know that I have a LOT to learn about the whole blogging world... but here goes! I am finding that the things I get the most excited about when planning for school and the things I want to share with you all on this blog are more often inspired by my little girl lately, so I have thought about working on a blog that combines these worlds. I have seen other mommy-teacher blogs that are so well written and inspiring - I am not here to compete or out-do anyone who is making a career from this amazing technological world - but I do think I can use this as a place to share creative classroom projects, artsy (and not-so-artsy) stuff we do at home with our three-year-old princess while preparing for baby #2, and sometimes just vent to anyone who's willing to listen... or read ;)

A perfect example of these two worlds I live in becoming one is in the summer preschool program I am teaching this month. It is a short and simple program - 4 hours a day, 3 days a week, 2 groups of 6-8 kiddos each day - and I'm given so much freedom in the planning! This summer, I promised parents and administrators that I would focus on some kindergarten readiness skills and I am amazed at the progress the students have made in only 3 weeks! Yesterday was our big handwriting focus day and I tried to make it a little more fun by allowing the students to pick foam animal stickers first, then write about the animals. Some simply traced the animal names, while others were copying sentences from models. This was so easy to differentiate - we were able to put stickers on one side of the page and animal names on the other for students with fine motor deficits to simply draw lines matching the correct pairs - so I brought a few home for my little girl too. Proud and boasting mama that I am, I swear she's already ready for kindergarten (as if I could get up the nerve to send her at only 3!) but she does need to work on those pre-writing skills. Animal stickers + trip to the zoo = Motivation!!! And since I'm sure you'll see as I continue this blogging adventure, I am a behaviorist after all, so motivation and reinforcements are always a big part of learning in my book!

So this is my idea... I want to be a part of this community of learning and sharing online. I have an adorable, sweet, smart, creative little princess at home, a second little one on the way this fall, a classroom full of students I will always refer to as "my kids" too, and an amazingly supportive group of people around me - my family, friends, and coworkers. I love to take inspiration from blogs, Instagram, and of course Pinterest, and make those ideas work for someone in my life. I love to be creative (although I promise I won't video myself singing anything for you). I want to use this blog to share those inspirations and what I do with them with you - for your kids, students, family, friends, and coworkers.