::April Boards of the Past::

Well here's my boards from April. I forgot to post them. April is often a little tricky, sometimes there's Easter and sometimes, like this year, there isn't. Most times I just go with a spring theme. It's pretty safe.

Here's my board from 2011. We made Easter eggs and I turned them into an "Easter egg tree." 

 Here's my board from 2012: One of my very favorites. We made sheep by blowing bubbles with paint and cute little chicks. Those sheep are one of my very favorite projects I've ever done. 

 I know I already shared this board, but I figured I'll put all the April boards in one spot. :)

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::May Board UPDATE::

So I messed up. I forgot to post my April boards from the past! This is actually my board for May. And June. Oops. We made little scuba men and I for one think they're adorable! I don't think there's much to explain because the board speaks for itself. 

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::May Boards of The Past::

Wow! I've been MIA for awhile I loads of projects and ideas to share with you as well as some book reviews that have been piling up. Sorry I haven't been around, time has once again flown past me!

Part of the reason that I've been gone is that my husband and I just celebrated our one year anniversary and I threw myself into planning our trip to Portland, Oregon (I'll share some pictures of our trip too - Portland is a GREAT city for kids). We obviously didn't do all the things geared for kids but there is so much for them to do there. It would make a wonderful family vacation spot. More on that later...

Today I'm going to share my May boards of the past. Sometimes May boards are a conundrum for me. I always end up asking myself if I should stick to spring or make it a summerish board that I can leave up through June. You'll see what I mean:

I did this board in 2011 as a homage to my mom. She loves birds and birdhouses and I thought it was the perfect spring board. The houses turned out so cute and it just looked so happy!

 This was in 2012. One of those boards that I kept up through June. By far one of my favorite boards! We made envelope sharks, coffee filter fish, and bowl jelly fish. 

 And now this year's board. We did our interpretation of Eric Carle's, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." 

 Here's our caterpillars on their leaves.

 And here's the ice cream and pie he ate through.

Happy May Friends! Pin It

::March Boards of the Past::

Well apparently I don't have a picture from last years board. But I do have the board I made 2 years ago. The kindergartners I had at the time were really obsessed with Super Mario Bro's. I decided to channel that and make it into a board. We made Mario, Princess Peach, and toadstools. I painted the background to look a scene from the game.  

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::March Board::

Here's my board for March and let me tell you, I'm super excited about it! I decided to avoid anything that was directly related to March holidays like St. Patty's Day because Easter is also happening in March this year. Dr. Seuss' birthday is in March so I decided to go that rout. I was inspired by this board that I found on Pintrest.

I had the kids make "Thing One & Two's," pom pom Truffula tree, and Lorax. They turned out wonderful! We added fleece to his mustache for more texture and to take it to the next level.

I used my mom's tracer to blow up a picture of Pipsqueak to add some fun to the board.

Here's a close up of our Lorax and Truffula tree. 

I hope you like my board as much as I do. It's my favorite of this year. I'm so happy with how it turned out! 

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::WOW & February Boards of The Past - Updated::

That's all I can say...I'm so far behind in blogging! February has literally flown by and I cannot seem to keep up. I mean honestly, where did it go!?

Well I know these are late but here's my February boards of the past:

Here's my board from 2011:

 Here's my board from 2012:

Here's this year's board: 

I forgot to add my other board for February. Halfway through February I took down the Valentine's stuff and put up some Abraham Lincoln's that we made for Presidents Day. It turned out so well!

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::January Board Update::

 I updated my board. It needed something else and I finally decided on owls. They filled in the open space on the board and continued on the whimsy feel that the board already had. Pin It

::January Boards::

January boards always allude me. I never can decide what to do. Do I go with a New Years theme? Keep it winterish? I never know. Last year I decided on a New Years board because I've never done one before. I knew I wanted to include a boom box just because it's fun. So I settled on a "Jamming into 2012." The kids all made musical notes to tie it in. 

This year I wanted to do a whimsical forest themed board. I wanted it to be fun and different. Here's a picture of what it looks like now. I think it needs something else but I haven't decided on what quite yet. 

Here's the cute little foxes that my kinder's made and our adorable toadstools.

I think it's coming together pretty well. 

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::December Board::

Here's some happy December boards! Apparently I really like the Christmas light boarder since I used it 2 years in a row. 

Here's this year's board:

Last years board...apparently I also like reindeer:

2 Years Ago:

I'll share some of the projects with you later.
Later Gaters! Pin It

::November Boards of The Past::

November is one of my favorite months, I love doing fall boards. Here's my boards from the last 2 years. 

 My board from 2 years ago. One of my favorites

 Last years board. 

We made turkeys, Indian corn, and torn paper acorns.

I love fall and winter. They're my favorite seasons to decorate for and my favorite seasons to make crafts for.
I'll tell you how we did the turkeys in another post. The picture doesn't do them justice but they were really cute and popped off the board.
Can't wait to share more fall projects!
;) Laters! Pin It

::November Board::

Here's my November board. It's very similar to one I did two years ago...I still might add some more things to it but I'm not entirely sure.

 We made corn this year similar to the Indian button corn I did before, 

only this year we glued on actual popcorn for the kernels.

 I added a little friend to the board. A hungry crow spying the corn! 

It's a good thing I have a scarecrow to keep things safe!

Keeping things simple this month. ;) 

After while crocodile! 

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::How Do I Do It?::

I've been asked many times from many people how I come up with my ideas for crafts. That's a slightly difficult question to answer because it's a process. I use many methods to come up with crafts. Because I have been doing this for so long and I have repeat kids every year, I try not to do the same crafts over and over again. That means after about my second or third year I had exhausted every single craft book we had on file. I had to start using the internet and my own devices to come up with projects.

A lot of times I come up with a concept that I want to use for my bulletin board and try to find projects that complete that idea. But that only works for so many days, I still have a lot of time to fill with projects. I always try to do at least 3 projects a week; that way I have one floating day to prep or just relax a bit. Plus there's other parts of our room to decorate (like the ceiling!) ;) (at our site Fridays are toy days, so we don't break up into groups like we usually do which means we have no time for projects) What usually happens after I've mapped out my plan of attack on my bulletin board I move on to the projects that I want to do for fun.

For either type of project, I come up with the idea. Sometimes I flush it out myself and come up with my templates to trace the project out. Sometimes I draw a blank and have to turn to other websites and blogs for projects. A lot of times I'll think "I want to make _______." We'll use a penguin for an example. I'll Google search "penguin crafts" or "penguin kid projects" and see what I can find. From there I'll either use what I find and make templates to trace out the project pieces or I'll combine 2 or 3 different images into one cohesive project. More often than not I don't like what I see and combine multiple things into one idea. Many times I'm just looking for inspiration and ways to flush out my own ideas, other times I'm lazy and want someone to do my thinking for me. ;)

With pintrest, things have become much easier. I can just search what I want and lots of things come up. I usually start there and then go to Google if I don't see something I like.

Here's some websites that I've used in the past, both for projects and time fillers like word searches or mazes. I don't really use them much anymore but they're a good starting point and wonderful resource to have on hand.

 The first and one of my very favorites is Kaboose, they have lots of fun and unique projects. They also have cooking projects if you're brave enough to try cooking with your kids. This is probably one of my favorite sites. The second is FamilyFun. They also have wonderful projects as well as group games and easy recipes. The third site I've used is DLTK Kids. This site is generally for the younger crowd. There's a lot of paper projects as well as mazes, word scrambles, and word searches (that could work for the older kids). The last is Coloring. It's a site chalk full of FREE coloring pages. Seasons, holidays, animals, and all sorts of people. The selection is endless for your kiddos. 

So that's how I do it. No rhyme or reason to it. Just good ole creativity and the ever faithful Google. I keep a sample of all my projects in a file box. I want to remember what I've done and it's always a good starting to point to see what I've done and how I can improve. I highly recommend doing this...plus it's always fun to look back. I'll show you how I do it later. :)

Happy crafting friends!
PS if you need more inspiration you can check out my "All Things Child Care" board or my "Bizarre Holidays Lesson Plan" board. Pin It

::October Boards of the Past::

Well apparently I don't have a picture of last years board (so sad)! Maybe I should change the title to "October BOARD of the Past." hehehe! But here's my board from 2 years ago. Those spider webs were a pain in the rear to put up by my lovely co-worker helped me and it really made the board fun. Sorry its not a very good picture, I took it with my very old cell phone.

We did a marble roller project. I love doing these! They turn out so wonderful! Unfortunately when we were doing this I didn't have any black construction paper so I had to use tissue paper. That was such a pain because the paper was so thin and it kept rolling with the marble. But we made it through and had some pretty awesome pictures to hang up. I added little spiders to their pictures to really get the point across. 

If you've never done marble painting before its very simple. You need a pan with sides on it (like a jelly roll pan or brownie pan- any pan with at least a 1/2 inch side is good), a marble, paper, and paint. You put the paper on the bottom of the pan and then dip the marble in your paint. Put the marble in the pan and tip the pan back and forth to get the marble rolling. You can use as many colors as you like, even add a little glitter. They always turn out great no matter what you do.

Have a spooky day! ;) Pin It

::October Board::

October kind of snuck up on me. At our site we switch boards every month. We rotate who gets the front board to keep everything fresh and showcase each groups things. I wasn't really sure how I wanted to go about this month's board. Usually I've thought ahead a couple weeks and planned out what I want to do so that I'm ready when we switch, but this month it totally cut me off guard. Eventually I settled on doing a "monster mash" board. It's not my most glamorous board but I think it's kinda cute...well at least the kids projects are. 

We made spiders, "monsters," and "mummies." 

(side note: Dollar Tree has lots of teacher supplies- the letters on this board are from the dollar tree, I also bought metallic boarders which I'm particularly excited about). ;)

Here's the monster that I made as an example.

Here's my groups "monsters." I was really happy with how they turned out. 

Each one is different and adorable. 

Here's some of my favorites- We'll just call it the monster hall of fame :)

Our monsters are painted toilet paper rolls. I traced arms and feet for the kids to cut out. I cut out the mouths for them because it was easier and faster for me to do it. I like to give a certain amount of freedom when we do projects so I let them pick out whatever color they wanted for their noses and any amount of eyes up to 4. They also had the option to add stripes or polka dots to their creatures. Plus they got to pick out the color they wanted to paint they're monster.

Here's the mummies. They were easy. We wrapped 2-3 strips of white paper around a toilet paper roll and added 2 google eyes. Easy as pie! I've seen it done with gauze or ripped paper strips but we just stuck with strips of paper. 

 These are our spiders. Typically I would have had the kids paint these but I just wasn't up for a paint project so we opted for the quicker (and much easier to clean up) marker project. We took a single egg carton cup and colored it black. I punched 2 holes on either side for the legs. We used pipe cleaners that the kids pushed through both holes and then bent to make spider legs. Then the eyes and I tied a string from the middle so that I could hand them from the ceiling.

I'll share some of our stuff from the last week as well as some of my projects from past years in the coming weeks. We're getting into my favorite part the year here. I always get excited to do fall and winter art projects because they're my favorite seasons; so I'm excited to share with you! 

Peace out peeps! 

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::September's Past::

As my first official child care related post I'm going to share my September boards from the last 2 years as well as the one I did for this year. I always have a lot of fun doing bulletin boards. I love the opportunity to show case my student's work and to show our parents that we really do things with their kids when they're with me. So here's my "September's past:" 

 September 2010- I love photography so this was a fun/silly way to incorporate that. I punched the camera's and film strips at my local "ESC" (educational service center) and put pictures of the kids in my group in each camera.

 September 2011- This one I was a little less thrilled with. I felt it was kind of boring, but we sure had fun making our frogs. I was really into paint projects last year...no idea why but this one jump started it all (no pun intended).

September 2012- We made "boot-leg" smores. I had wanted to use fun foam for the smores but alas, we didn't have the colors I needed so we used felt and cotton balls. Hey- it got the point across! 

Here's a close up of our "smores."  

Can't wait to share more things with you!

I've got a lot of projects and posts to write about so I'll be seeing you soon!

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