Quick and Easy St. Patrick's Day Wreath

I have been wanting a nice March wreath for my front door, and since we have a house full of Irishmen, I decided on a St. Patrick's Day theme.

I bought a big package of large shamrocks from the craft store. The package in in two colors so I alternated the colors and formed a wreath, hot glueing the shamrocks together into a circle.
Next the kids simply added foam shamrock stickers and shamrock "jewels".
All these stickers were very cheap at the craft store, much cheaper than buying a ready made wreath.
The beautiful final results---in less that a half-hour.
(I guess according to this picture, it could also be a frame for a cuties head!)

I hot glued string onto the back of the wreath to make a hanger for it.

It now adorns our front door---a invitation for any visiting leprechauns.

Sunflowers of Thankfulness

Today we made "sunflowers of thankfulness".

They were very simple and turned out very cute!

All you need to do is to paint one side of a paperplate brown.

While the paint dries, cut out sunflower "petals".

I folded a sheet of paper in thirds like a letter and then cut out three petals at a time.

About 12 petals fit on a regular sized paperplate.
On each petal, write things that you are thankful for.

The three youngest kids made the sunflowers, but everyone took part in naming things they were thankful for.

Glue the petals to the paperplate.

Gracie added a happy face to her flower.

Our "thankfulness sunflowers" are now displayed on the kitchen cupboards to remind everyone what is most important during this special time of year.

Indian corn jewelry

I remember doing this every year when I was little.

We gathered the indian corn and then we would make jewelry.

I can still remember how sore my fingers would get shucking the corn and then stinging it for bracelets and necklaces.

Well, this year, my finger didn't get sore at all.

I had so many little helpers, the corn was shucked in no time at all.

The colors are just gorgeous this year. (I think they are probably just as beautiful every year, but every year I am in awe of the beauty of this colorful corn.)

This years corn was VERY dry, so we used a hammer and large needle to hammer holes through the kernels. This was very helpful in speeding up the stringing process.

Basically, we made beads out of the corn kernels

Mark and Amy hammering away. Gracie, string her bracelet.

I bought stretchy beading thread. Perfect for this project. Having the holes already made sped this up so much, I was very pleased.

Gorgeous!!

My beautiful crafter, and beautiful model.

"Stained Glass' apple suncatchers

Our favorite "big" apple book of the week!!!

(Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE our library....they have the greatest things!!)

We have been reading plenty of apple books around here in honor of all the apple orchards here in CNY. We will be apple picking very soon, but in the meantime I found this cute apple suncatchers to make over at Craftideas.info.
I printed the pattern right out on card stock and then cut out 2 apples for each of my kindergarteners.
Kim and Luke were busy tearing red and green tissue paper into small pieces.

Luke chose to cut his paper. Kimmy preferred ripping her paper.

I placed the apple pattern, right side down, on clear contact paper.
Kim and Luke are 4 and 5 and they did a fine job with this sticky paper.

I was afraid it would end up a big mess, but they managed fine.

They then filled in their apples, and apple leaves with the green and red tissue paper.

I then placed another piece of clear contact paper over the back of the apples.

You can see in the photo above, this gave me a little trouble. It is a little wrinkled, but it made no difference in the pretty final results.

Cut out the apples.

They look just beautiful on the window of the back door.

They make a great addition to our "suncatcher" door.

You can see how the big kids made the cross suncatchers at this blog post.

Kitten's First Full Moon--Color Changing Milk

Today we enjoyed the wonderful picture book, Kitten's First Full Moon.
Little kitten sees the full moon for the first time, and thinks it is a beautiful bowl of milk.
While reading it I wanted to have the kids do a project that could be tied into the story.
I thought of Steven Spangler's experiment Color changing milk.
A very simple experiment with great results.
You need:
2% or whole milk
plates
food coloring
q-tips
Dawn dish detergent
Pour the milk onto the plates and let is sit and settle.
This is a great time to practice lapping milk like a kitten.
Carefully drop one color of food coloring into the milk, trying not to "mix" it up.

Dip the q-tip into the Dawn dish detergent

Dip the q-tip into the milk and watch the wonderful swirling colors.....

The first "dip"!

I love the looks on the kids faces as they did this---it works over and over.

Try not to mix the milk though, or it will all turn gray.

I hope you enjoy this sideways video....sorry about that!

Have you done something fun this week.....Head on over and "Show and Tell" at ABC and 123.