Recycle, Re-use, & Remember Mother's Day!

And A GR8 Earth Day Activity Too!

We use recycled colorful magazine pages to create beautiful beads for our Mother's Day necklaces.
Here is a pic-tutorial:  (Is that even a word?)    
 Earth Day & Mother's Day... Together At Last!

This project is almost FREE.

Start by cutting lots of colorful triangles that are about 1 1/4"-1 1/2" wide by 3"-5" long.

Gather some round toothpicks, white glue, and stretchy beading elastic (find it at Michael's).

Begin by rolling the shortest end of the triangle 
tightly on the toothpick.  

(No glue yet.)

Younger students might get better results using a wooden skewer 

instead of a toothpick, but everyone of my kindergarteners were able to do this project using round toothpicks..  

Sometimes it takes a few tries to get the hang of it. 
They need to keep wrapping tightly.

They do eventually get it.  :)

"Keep wrapping, keep it tight!"

Here is where you add a line of white glue.  Keep wrapping and don't worry if the glue oozes out.  

Wrap to the end & add a little glue to the surface of the bead to seal it.  

Quickly slide the bead off of the toothpick and allow it to dry on some wax paper or in a waxed paper cup.

After each student makes 10 beads, have them use elastic beading thread to string the paper beads along with small glass beads to create a necklace or bracelet.  

Use the other little beads to make cool patterns.

Just tie off the end with a few good knots.  

Students like to use color themes, 

like using all blue triangles, or all earth tones.  

Our moms loved these soooo much and actually wear them!

We make these necklaces around Earth Day and save them for Mother's Day.

Mother's Day Gifts Continued... Free, easy, & you still have time :o)

Our Amazing Hats:

I was amazed at how cute our Mother's Day hats turned out this year.

So colorful and every one was different.

And, they were FREE.  We used colored butcher paper and the trims & craft supplies I already had in my classroom.  You still have time to make these. 

These hats are all ready to be wrapped up for Mother's Day!

This little one is modeling the lovely blue & white hat she made for her mommy.
We made these for our Mother's Day Tea one year.
 Imagine an entire room filled with moms all wearing these hats.

My T.K. students LoVeD creating these hats for their moms.

I blogged about them last week, but I wanted to share this again because these came out so much cuter than the ones in my previous blog post.  

Making The Hats:

It's a 2 to 3-day process, but you can make them all in one day, let them dry overnight and send them home the following day.   We made the hats on the first day.  We let them dry overnight.  Then, we decorated them on the 2nd day.  We wrapped them on the third day.

Day 1:

Making the hats...

Painting on the glue & water mixture.

So much fun!

Adding the 2nd piece of butcher paper
and smoothing it all out.

Forming the shape over one bowl & adding a 2nd
bowl on top.  Then we crunched up the sides.

We let the hats dry overnight.

Day 2:

Decorating the hats...

Dried hats all ready to be decorated.

Students can choose their decorations or you can
turn this into a math lesson by giving your
students 20 cents and pricing the decorations.

They loved this part the most.

I worked with 3 students at a time as they decorated their hats.
 Fun Foam stickers worked great too.

She trimmed this blue and white hat with a lavender tissue paper flower.  

Day 3:

Wrapping the hats...

Tape 2 large pieces of tissue paper together & place a hat
upside-down in the center of the tissue paper.
(I wrote the chid's name on the bottom side of the tissue paper
 so it will show on the top when we are done wrapping.
The card will eventually cover their name.)

Start folding the sides in and taping them.

Continue to fold until the hat it covered.

Flip it over.  You can see the name on top.

Here is a stack all ready for their cards
 to be placed on top.

The cute card will go on top instead of a bow.

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So what are you doing with your class for Mother's Day?

Leave a comment & let me know.

See you all tomorrow.

Palma :)

Beautiful Mother's Day Gifts

This Year's Gift:

Here are two samples of the hats my students made a couple of years ago.
They were given 20 cents to "buy" decorations for their hats.

This year, we are making beautiful Mother's Day hats with my T.K. kids.  

As the children "buy" the decorations for their Mother's Day hats they will be reading numbers on the price tags, adding up the price of the decorations, and practicing fluency in addition.  All of these are Common Core skills.  :)

Here's How To Make These Hats:

What you need:  

                           2 different colored squares of butcher paper (24" X 24") per child.

                           White glue and water

                           A large brush

                           2 large bowls that will nest (1 inside the other) 

                           that is about the size of a head

                           Decorations like silk flowers, pom-pons, trims, buttons, 

                           glitter, and feathers

Make a mixture of 60% white glue and 40% water.
Write the child's name on the bottom of the base sheet.  

The student paints the glue mixture onto the base sheet of butcher paper and
lays the 2nd piece of butcher paper on top.  Smooth out the wrinkles.

Place the glued paper over a large salad bowl like the one above.

Press the larger bowl over the paper and press down.
Then, have the student begin to crunch up the sides and roll them toward the bowl.

The student should continue to roll up the sides
until the hat is the desiredshape and size.
  Then, remove both bowls and
set the hat aside to dry overnight.  

The following day, set up a table with items the children may "buy" for their hats.  I call students up 2 at a time and I give the first child 20 cents.  All of the decorations are priced 1 cent to 5 cents.  The student makes choices and the coins are counted out as they are spent.  The 2nd child gets a turn after watching the 1st child (so they already know what they want to purchase) and the 1st child gets another child for me.  I continue this rotation until everyone has shopped.  Students take their purchase to their table where they glue the items on with white glue.

These look great on all of the moms if you are having a Mother's Day Tea.  :)

Last Year We Made Beaded Necklaces:

I'll blog about those tomorrow.

See you all tomorrow!

Palma :)