Rainsticks & Aprons!

I had another fabulous day at GE today! There was so much stuff to make & take in this class that I ended up not even making everything! I got to a point where I thought "If I make one more thing, I'll never be able to get it all to the car at the end of the day!" So much of it was practical and useful, so I am really glad I took this course!

I was able to chitchat some with other ladies in the class - isn't it cool when you meet nice people? We were talking about talkative kiddos and one lady expressed how it's the ones who are the hardest to reach that you come to love the most and as everyone agreed with her I realized I had found a table full of teachers that were meant to be teachers. They were able to honestly say that, even if they had to work at it at first, they came to love even the child with the worst behavior problems! Those are the teachers I want to hang out with :) To my joy, my son's next teacher was in that group - makes this mama really happy to know he will be going to a caring person!

I also realized (again), that the best teachers in the class were the ones who were sharing information, swapping email addresses and exchanging lesson ideas. It's that spirit of networking, of wanting to find new ways to teach things, that desire to continue to learn and grow, that marks all of the teachers that I look up to. I ran into my mentor teacher from back when I was student teaching. She was excited that I was coming back down to kindergarten and mentioned she was trying to set up a kindergarten exchange program. We would meet at least once a month to share resources and ideas, and facilitate the implementation of the Common Core through out the district. I cannot wait to be a part of this again, and I really feel privileged to work with these other wonderful kinder teachers!

Here are a few pictures of what I made today. I almost saved it for Made It Monday next week, but I trust that inspiration will strike before Monday so I'll have something else to share then! By the way, here's a great quote about inspiration:

"We should be taught not to wait

for inspiration to start a thing.

Action always generates inspiration.

Inspiration seldom generates action."

 Frank Tibolt

I think this is such a true saying - it's usually when I'm in the middle of doing something that I get inspired to do it differently or add to it or take it in another direction entirely. In fact, when I make something and it turns out exactly the way I pictured it, I'm always a bit disappointed that I didn't manage to make it even better.

First up is handy dandy little apron. Here are some that others in the class painted - I love how everyone had a different vision!

Here is what I ended up doing, to match my theme:

The apron itself is only about $3 at Hobby Lobby, so this is a very fun, inexpensive craft that is also functional! I plan on keeping my celebration sticks in it as well as a pen or two and stickers/stamps since there are two pockets!

We also made rain sticks!

Here's what you'll need - an empty Pringles can, nails, rice, beans, salt, packing peanuts and contact paper or wrapping paper. You just nail about 15 nails randomly into the sides of the Pringles can, add about 4-6 packing peanuts and about 2 tbs of dried beans, 2 tbs rice and then salt. You can even crumple some aluminum foil into small balls and throw those in there to differentiate the sound a bit more. It took me a while to figure out how much of each I wanted in my can - I ended up putting a lot of salt because I liked that sound! But, since you can just keep taking off the lid and adding more, it's really easy to get it exactly as you like it. Then you cover it with paper and decorate!

 I plan to use mine as an attention getter :) There's something so fascinating about rain sticks!

Well it is very late and I have another early morning tomorrow - I have to stop taking naps in the evening otherwise I will never get back on a school schedule! Tomorrow I start a new course entitled "Positive Discipline" so I am excited to see what it's all about!

I did get a couple of emails about my Line Up songs/chants. A couple of people wanted a jungle theme version, and I happened to have a zebra print already on hand, so I switched out the backgrounds. By the way, please don't hesitate to leave me a message if you see something you like but want tweaked a little bit. I'm always happy to try to make my creations better/more accessible. Anyways, if the zebra print is more your style, grab it here!

By the way, if you're an Okie blogger or blog reader, please join us on Saturday for a meet -up! So far we haven't had a lot of rsvps, so if we don't get more we might have to push the date back. If the date doesn't work for you, but you'd still like to meet up, please let me know - we can see about alternative dates/times!