The Mayflower

I saw this Thanksgiving Mayflower decoration yesterday (the day before Thanksgiving) and I had to make it. Overall it took zero dollars and just over a half an hour, including drive time to get the barn wood and sticks but minus the time I had to glue the old, broken wood back together :/

First I had to load the boys in the truck and drive to our land (mile and a half away). There is an old barn there, so any time I want barn wood, there it is! I found a couple good pieces and some sticks and we drove home. 20 minutes max.

Then I traced out a boat shape. I tried to do it as similar to her Mayflower, I’m not an artist! Aaand, you can’t really see it. It’s in pencil…but it’s there. 2 minutes.

Cut it on the scroll saw. 3.5 minutes.

Ta da, the Mayflower.

But I had to fix a few mishaps with the old, warped, falling apart wood.

I drilled some holes for the sticks and used construction paper for the flags/sails. 10 minutes.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

J week

It’s already J week! I planned 5 days but only 4 days actually happened – Jungle, Jump, Jingle Bells, & Jar/Jelly Beans. We didn’t do Journal, but all I was going to do on that day was have little G write in his journal. I’ll just have to do that some other day!!

Jungle – (1) I made some jungle animal stickers for the big J to start the week off. He put them all along the line of the uppercase J. (2) I sectioned off a paper into 6 section. Little G stamped used these jungle animals stamps and stamped 1 animal in the section with number 1, 2 animals in the section with number 2, etc. (3) I used these coloring pages but consolidated them onto one page. He colored them and would say “H-H-Hippo” etc. (4) He practiced his J’s (uppercase and lowercase). There are a lot of backwards J’s! (5) Similar to this jungle fun with letters idea, I made one and had him put the lowercase letters in the right category. Good awareness to the different shapes the letters make. (6) I laminated this animal counting page (and added the hippos pictures). Not pictured -  We played a matching shadows game and also a memory version of it.

Jump – (1) We made this twistynoodle mini book. (2) The rest of preschool was actual JUMPING. This video shows all the jumping things they did (this is where I got the ‘jump for a post it’ idea)

Jingle Bells – This was our short day. All I did was give them a bunch of jingle bells and some trays to sort them in. We also put some in balloons, which anything to do with balloons and they are happy. They ended up playing with the jingle bells ALL DAY!!

Jar/Jelly Beans – (1) We started with a few different sizes of jars and filled them up with wood beads. They filled them up, emptied them out, filled them up OVER AND OVER! (2) I cut our a jar shape and put _AR on it. We worked on rhyming words. It’s still a hard one for him. He said the sound that the scrabble letter made and then I added –ar. He kind of figured it out. Then with do-a-dot markers he added “jelly beans” to the jar. (3) Then we pulled out the real jelly beans! I gave him a handful of jelly beans and he sorted them by color. Then we graphed them and he counted out how many he had, which one had the most, which had the least, etc.

J WEEK!

Family Hand Turkey of 7!

I made this turkey for my sister and her family. They have, count them, 7 people in their family. Makes for a pretty amazing turkey! I love the colors she chose, much different than the bright & bold colors in my family hand turkey.

Talk about A TON of feathers!!

I love the dad & baby hands together, such a HUGE difference!

And my favorite part of this turkey. I stamped the year and then the initial of their first name with their age on each hand. Great keepsake!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Marie White photography – wood sign

Yet another wood sign. This one is the largest size that I make (10.5” x 22”), in black with white vinyl. Thanks for the opportunity Marie!

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DIY Build-a-Bug magnet set

Not too long ago I saw this Build-A-Bug magnet setwhile I was looking for fun stuff for I week in preschool (I is for Insects). I really liked this idea, but didn’t have the time to wait for the set to be shipped since I waited until the last minute (the price isn’t bad, so that isn’t what stopped me). So I got to work!

First I drew some build-a-bug parts. I’m not an artist, so they aren’t fancy or anything, but you get the idea. There are heads, eyes, antennas, legs, bodies (thorax/abdomens), wings, and mouths.

I printed those bug parts on sticker paper,then colored them with sharpies. I was going to have the boys color them, but I decided to have them cut and ready to go for preschool instead. I tried out a new technique for sealing them, and instead of my usual contact paper I used clear coat spray paint!It worked great!!

Then apply the sticker paper to the magnet sheet. I ordered a huge roll of this stuff for random projects I knew I’d have someday! The cut away. This magnet sheeting is too thick for my silhouette, otherwise I would have DEFINTIELY cut it that way instead.

Here are all the bug parts, cut out and ready to go.

I had the boys use the fridge as the ‘magnet board’ but you could use a cookie sheet or anything magnetic. My boys came up with some pretty interesting insects!!

{what you need}
  --Build-a-bug printout
  --Sticker paper
  --Sharpies
  --Clear coat spray paint
  --Magnet sheet
  --Scissors

 

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I week

Yet another fun week of preschool for my boys. Next week is J week and then we are doing a week of Thanksgiving activities & fun. Each day this week we did a different I items – Ice-cream, Ice, Insects, I spy, and Indians. Check it out!

Ice-cream: (1) I made some Ice-Cream stickers with the Silhouette [We used them in #2 & 3]. (2) We started the day off with a big letter ‘I’ and he traced it with his finger then put ice-cream stickers on the lines. (3) With the other ice-cream stickers I made, he traced the lowercase letters (a-z) then colored them. Then with this ice-cream cone page I made he matched the lowercase abc ice-cream scoops to the uppercase ABC cones. [It took A LOT of thought and attention span for this one. We took a few breaks before he finished the page .] (4) Of course we had to eat ice-cream and watched an Ice-cream song and how ice-cream is made on youtube. (5) Using homemade puffy paint we painted some ice-cream on the cones and put sprinkles on top. (6) I made this ice-cream scoop counting page that you can use with do-a-dot markers or stickers. He loved doing this one! (7) My sister made us this ice-cream counting game last year. You roll the die and put that many scoops on your cone. He liked to stack it as high as it could go before he started over! (8) NOT PICTURED, we made homemade strawberry ice-cream! Yummy!!

Ice: (1) Twistynoodle ice page, little G practiced his uppercase and lowercase ‘I’s. (2) Then we played with ice cubes and watched them melt. (3) The night before I froze a bunch of their little toys in ice. They had A LOT of fun getting them out of the ice – with hammers, squeezy bottles of water, anything they could find to get them out! Lots of fun. (4) They made their own ice cubes. I made a batch of koolaid (half the water) and gave them some icecube trays and squeezy bottles. They loved filling them up, lots of coordination for this activity…and lots of clean-up!!

Insects: (1) I found some random insect pictures on Google and used Quicksand font for tracing ‘I’ & ‘i’s. He also stuck foam insect/bug stickers on the matching bugs & on an uppercase I page. (2) I got these insects and the sorting tray at the dollar store. He sorted them by color and by type. (3) Then he painted with them! The centipedes made the best print! (4) I made some build-a-bug magnets. It was a hit!

I spy: This was our short day for preschool. We made some I Spy shakers, read a lot of I Spy books (by Jean Marzollo) we checked out at the library, and played a couple games of I Spy. By far the best part of the day (for the boys) was filling up the I Spy shakers. They LOVE playing with rice & wheat!

Indians (& Pilgrams): (1) We did a do-a-dot Indian Native American page. (2) We made an Indian headdress. I cut feathers, wrote what he’s thankful for on them and made a headband. He cut squares and made a pattern on the band. (3) With this fishing page, little G traced all the letters, then went in search of the matching uppercase letter taped on the fireplace. When he found and matched a letter, he colored in the fish. (4) Another fun coloring page. This one was color by number. (5) Grant and I made a teepee for our little guys! Grant found the poles while he was out hunting one day, and I got the material at Home Depot (drop cloth). Then after an hour of cutting and fitting it to the teepee we had it ready for painting. They loved coloring it and painting it, but not as much as they loved playing in it!

I WEEK!

Adams est. 2013

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