Mother's and Father's Day

Hey all. It's been a crazy couple of months so I apologize for the super belated post. Lots of things going on in the classroom and at home. I will be sitting at home on my couch and think, "Hey, I haven't posted any of my awesome new activities on my blog. I should probably do that now." Then I look at my computer (which is a whole 10 feet away from me) and think, "Maybe later. The computer is so far away and it would take more energy than my body has right now to move over there and way more brain power than I have available to actually form a coherent sentence that people may begin to understand." Hence why we have reached almost two months later before a new post has been made.

As I said, it's been a crazy couple of months. The kiddos are learning like nobody's business. The hubby graduated with his master's degree. Our Mother's Day project (best idea I have ever had) took some serious at home work. Memorial Day weekend happened with some serious no-technology camping. Vacationed in Nashville and hiked a mountain (No joke about the hike. 2700 feet elevation gain in 3.1 miles. I shudder to think about it.). Came back to work to jump in with both feet on our Father's Day project (not nearly as much at home work as Mother's Day. Sorry, Dads). And here we are. Almost three weeks after I wrote this draft. With lots of updates. Where to start, where to start.....

I'm really excited about our Mother's Day project so I will start there. I found an awesome idea on Pinterest to make coasters out of the kids' art work. Kind of a process but fairly cheap and totally worth it. I just hope all the moms appreciated it as much as I loved it!
 -  I started with the kids' artwork. I just discovered some really awesome metallic dot markers (also known as Bingo markers) hiding in a closet here. I gave them each a marker and white construction paper and they went to town dotting away. To get a variety of color on their papers I had them trade colors every minute or so.

- Next came some shopping. The materials needed:

• Mod podge
• 4"x 4" white tiles - cost is about $0.16/tile. I found mine on sale for $0.2/tile at Lowe's. Sweet!
• Acrylic clear coat - Small can. I made 52 coasters and with 3 layers on each coaster. Used maybe 1/16 of the can I bought. 
• Felt - backing for each coaster
• Hot glue 

- Each child made a set of four coasters. I cut out two squares from their dot artwork. I made the squares slightly smaller than the face of the tile so the paper didn't extend over the sides. I cut another two squares out of plain white construction paper and had them squeeze their handprints onto those squares. 

- I stuck the artwork to the tiles using mod podge. A layer before you put the artwork down and then a layer over top. Do your best to squeeze out the bubbles. The dot markers/paint made the construction paper shrink up a bit so it wouldn't lie completely flat. Hence I had some ridges/bubbles in the coasters. They still work fine, they just don't look straight from a store. Gives it more of a home made quality.

- Coated the top and sides of the tile with 3 layers of acrylic clear coat. I probably would have been okay with 2 layers but I wanted to be on the safe side and the clear coat dries pretty quickly.

- Finished with hot gluing a felt square on the back of each tile to prevent scratching. I covered the entire back of the tile but you could probably just do small squares in each corner. I think the entire back looked nicer.

Even if you don't need coasters in your house, this is a great project to keep a nice piece of your child's artwork without the worry of it being ripped up or lost. 

Mother's Day weekend was also graduation weekend for the hubby so we had a lot of family in town. I had some extra tiles leftover (at $0.2 a piece I wish I had gotten more!). My nieces stayed with me so I had them each create a coaster to give to their mom (my sister). The two oldest are 7 and 9 so they were able to draw actual pictures with my fine point sharpies and they each wrote a message on theirs. I was able to get the 18 month old to sit down for a quick second and make a scribble with a crayon. Sis also has a fourth baby on the way so once we gave her the other three coasters I got one of her ultrasounds and made a fourth coaster. That turned out super neat.

Needless to say, I absolutely loved this project. The most expensive part was the clear coat but I have a ton leftover to use for other projects at home. 

Father's Day I had to get a little more creative for. Apparently people don't like to be as crafty for Father's Day and there weren't nearly as many ideas on Pinterest and other websites. The only thing I could find were cute sayings for cards. Lame. I mean, that's great and all but after an awesome Mother's Day gift I can't bail on the dads! So my mom helped me come up with some decent ideas and we went to Hobby Lobby to price them out. Best place to go when you don't know what to do. You may be there for a while but I came up with more ideas once I got there. Finally settled on making keychains with wooden beads. 

- Materials for this project:

• Wooden beads - mine were assorted colors but I also saw some really nice wood colored beads. Cost was $3.99/pack, each pack had 150 beads.
• Key rings - Pack of 80 assorted metal rings/key rings. Cost $2.99
• Nylon string

- I distributed the amount of beads I had evenly between the kids which gave them all approximately 20 beads. This made for a rather long key chain so I decided to loop it around instead of having it hang down. Less beads probably would have looked nicer but my kids love to thread beads so I let them enjoy themselves. I didn't want to use only parts of what they put together so we made it work.

- I figured out the kiddos do best stringing beads with pipe cleaners. I then took the pipe cleaners home and transferred them to the string I bought. That was probably the toughest part because the string was thick and some of the beads were really small. I though about using leather but wasn't sure how the tie would hold. 

- Once the beads were strung, hubby tied it around a key ring (don't ask me how) then burned the knot to melt it together and hopefully keep the beads from falling off. Other string would also work for this project but I liked being able to melt the nylon to hold the knot. 

I have a lot more projects to report on but had to get these out there since I was so proud of them. We have been working on colors and shapes the past few months so I have been really making the kids focus these past weeks. I finally came to the realization that they are newly 3 and don't need to know everything right now so I have decided to give the munchkins a break for the summer. Our current unit is zoo animals and I'm mixing in some science play to keep their minds active. Hopefully a new update will be coming your way shortly!