Puppy Love

As I'm planning to move soon I've started going all my old stuff to try and downsize, I found this giant "I Love You Puppy" that my friends gave me after I moved to the west coast a few years ago. It's adorable, but being 25 it's not exactly what I'd display in my apartment. A few of my munchkins have just recently had new siblings and have been emotional disasters to say the least, and having 2 teachers in a class of 24 makes it impossible to give them the one-on-one attention they need.

It's only been a few days since I brought the puppy in for the kids, and it has already been such a huge help! They give him hugs when they need extra love, play with him if I'm busy talking to a parent, and he even took a nap with an extra sensitive munchkin with a newborn at home. Today as we were leaving the classroom for the night, the last four munchkins said he needed to snuggle in the rocking chair and got a blanket to tuck him in for night with.


Guess it's true when they say one person's trash is another person's treasure....and also a good thing that my apartment is filled with things 3-5 year olds would love!

Tangled Tower

The parents went through a phase for a while donating giant boxes to our classroom so I painted a lot of Holiday boxes (a "spooky box, chimney, snow box, etc..). Our Rapunzel tower is hands down the munchkins favorite, and oddly enough the only one that is still standing ;p

This was actually an old freezer/refrigerator box and has been one of the best donations we've received. It had to be cut down the side, so the first thing I did was hot glue the box back together again. I painted it using basic washable tempera paint, gray for a base coat, black to define the "stones", green and pink for the vines, and brown for the windows! I cut out and adult size tower window on one side (basically because I am a giant child who likes to play in it too), two child sized windows, and a "secret door" behind a painted tree in the back.

We only let 2-3 kids play in it at a time so it doesn't get to crazy, and we keep it right next to the basket filled with all our donated princess dresses, shoes, and tiaras :) If you know anyone who is getting a fridge (or any other large item) in the future, have them save you the box!!

Go Green :D

Rockstar Birthday Board

As you will soon learn, I am totally obsessed with zebra print and anything "rockstar style". I'm really surprised it took me this long to think of a reason to make part of our class zebra print. I found the idea off of Pinterest, which led me to this blog .

As I mentioned before due to not being able to order supplies I had to improvise. I stapled white butcher paper to the wall and started painting the zebra stripes all over. The kids got to pick between pink or green "rockstar" sunglasses that we had left over from Graduation last year (children's faces are blacked out for obvious privacy reasons), and glued onto star cutouts. Each month has a different color star and their birthdays are written on the side of the star. Obviously, they weren't glammed out enough so we painted them with colorations washable glitter paint (ordered through DSS)

The kids LOVE our birthday board, and it actually hangs above their art files so they are always looking at and commenting on their Rockstar pictures :)

P.S. My Birthday is JUNE 12, just so nobody forgets ;p

Handprint Books

I'm always doing tons of hand print projects with the munchkins for the holidays, but unless I safely store them in their already filled 'all about me' books, they probably all tend to get lost at home with the rest of the artwork. I found this idea for a Handprint Art Book through Pinterest, and I knew I just had to make these for my munchkins!

We have a lot of supplies already, but are currently on an ordering hiatus due to unforeseen expenses on fixing the air in the school. I just used a sheet of card stock for each child and cut it in half for the front and back of the book. Then I used 5 large sheets of white construction paper, cut into 4 (making 20 pages inside each book), hole punched the sides and tied it with ribbon, just in case I need to add more pages later. I had the kids write their first names at the top of the book (traced it with highlighted letters if they aren't able yet) and that's it! Easy as ever and great to have ready so I can just place the handprints in the books when they are ready!

A little background...

I'm 25 and I've been teaching at the center I work at coming on 5 years this October, and even though I've successfully sent off 2 groups of amazing children to Kindergarten already, I still question how I was able to do that without Pinterest. If for some crazy reason you do not have one yet, I suggest you get one, like, yesterday.

Normal schools get summers off, but ours is year round which definitely makes it tricky getting things ready for the new year/new kids when the old ones mostly stay still the last week in august. My classroom is 3-5 year olds and my co-teacher and I rotate who gets the little ones each year and keep them for the next 2 years. This year my group will be the older ones, which I love because you can do so much more with them once they've had the first year to settle in! I'll be using this blog as the year goes on to post activities and art projects I do with the munchkins throughout the year!