End of the Year Preschool Party

This week we celebrated the end of preschool with a get together at the Splash Pad. All the older siblings are out of school, so they came along for the lunch and party. One of my friends compiled all the teacher’s praise for each student onto a certificate, and read the comments aloud. Natalie’s focused on her enthusiasm and artistry. She was beaming the whole time.

 

 

The last day of school I had the students pose with different objects to make up the ABC’s. I took emails from the field trips and lessons throughout the year to make up all the letters, then formatted it with a simple letter and caption, 4 to a page. Printed on brochure paper (glossy two sided paper not quite as stiff as cardstock), with a laminated cover. It was a huge hit. What kid doesn’t want to see themselves in a book? It was fun to reflect on the year behind and how much they’ve grown. If I do something similar in the future I’ll be sure to put my pictures in preschool folder on my computer each time I upload pics, and email all the Moms to get pictures the last month of school.

 

Last but not least the kids presented their moms with necklaces they made from wooden beads. Here’s Natalie posing with me wearing the necklace. You know, right behind some kids head. We took more shots, but Natalie’s eyes are closed, the Daley curse. Is there a photoshop action to open kids eyes? J/K.

 

Hooray for preschool! It’s been a great year.

Desktop Family Scrapbook- and a obvious tutorial

 

This year I did two editions of the family calendar- One focused on just my family and my siblings with us on vacation, and one with John’s side of the family- where we were just on one page, rather than all 12.

The Ingram family calendar has all the great pictures I took this year in one place, my backup plan if I never get to scrapbook this year. It takes me a couple hours to go through all my pictures, stick them in a publisher document, and do an auto calendar for the side. I usually sort pictures by season or kid, then do pages based around a vacation, a photo shoot, or a kid (each kid has their birthday month as a minimum). I like having enough space for the nicer pictures, or a bunch of small shots that are funny or telling, but not perfect. This calendar is 8.5 by 11.

 

This year for the Daley family scrapbook I switched things up. I made it half size, did 12 pages, some holiday, most family pictures of each of John’s siblings, with their family year in review above. I added a page at the end with birthdays and anniversaries listed by month.

There’s a plastic cover for the front so it stays semi protected while not in use.

The main innovation was an extra full sized page on the back, folded so it could have a stand and sit on your desktop.

I also formatted the family letters so you could hold the back page up, and see the family summary while looking at their pictures. I think most people will have the top page down on the back side and not keep it facing up- it looks silly to me in the above picture.

 

Here’s how you fold the extra page for a stand-

Just a reminder- the book is half page sized (8.5 by 5.5) , the extra page is full page sized (8.5 by 11)

Fold the page in half over the front of the book

Accordion fold it back two more times, in thirds, Then prop the book up, you can stick some of the pages under the final flap to keep it stable. It’s not very hard, you could glue it, but I didn’t think that was necessary.

Hooray for family pictures and calendars!

Dollar Store Jumbo Dry Erase Letter Books

I bought a pack of these ABC and 123 borders from the Dollar Store a few years ago. I taped them together to make a poster and hung them up in our hallway in Utah and in the playroom in Virginia. Now that I want my house to look a little more…classy (and now that my playroom is the common area of our upstairs), I didn’t want to hang them up. This morning I woke up and had a brilliant idea. Why not make it into a book??!

So here’s what you do-

1. Go buy a pack of the ABC or 123 borders from the dollar store.

2. If the border has no place to trace the number or letter, tape word strips onto the bottom or paper with Penmanship Print Font, 2-3 inches tall.(Tip-to use a True Type font, you download, then move into your fonts folder in your control panel. Then open in a word processing program. To make spaces of the lines without any symbols, you have to type the ~ symbol, it’s in the upper left corner next to the 1 on your keyboard).

3. Laminate. I used a small thermal laminator. It only laminates 13 inches wide, so I used two laminating pouch sheets overlapping slightly in the middle. Also you could go to the teacher store and have them laminate it for a small cost.

4. Cut around each piece, leaving a 1/4 inch border of plastic around the paper.

5. Bind- I used my Bind It All, with 3/8 inch bindings. I bound on the top for stability. You could pay $2 a binding to have an office supply store do it. Or you could punch holes and twist paper clips into each hole. Or use key chains. Or clip metal rings. Or trash twist ties. Or other techniques I have yet to discover. The important thing is that the binding doesn’t interfere with being able to write on the letters and numbers- so a thermal or stitch binding wouldn’t work.

Variations- Cut apart the borders to make individual letter/number pages and include more space for practicing the letter/number.

Voila! You’re done! Grab a toddler and some dry erase markers and teach a kid to read and count.

Bugs and Butterflies

Today in Preschool we did Bugs and Butterflies.

We read some books about what makes something an insect. I reccomend looking in the Non-ficiton section for books about butterflies and bugs, I'm all about the pictures rather than illustrations. The girls loved the book "Are you a Butterfly?" by Judy Allen.

We made books about the lifecycle of a butterfly. Actually, I made the books, they colored and glued in the parts: A lima bean for an egg, twisted pipe cleaner for caterpillar, torn leaves for eating, tissue paper chrysalis, and dollar store butterfly clip. Click for close up of the book. Comment or email me if you want a copy of the publisher book file.

We played with butterfly connectagons , made ladybugs out of strawberries, grapes and mini chocolate chips, and made a spider web with yarn.

Then they pretended to be bugs and try to jump all around the web and not get caught. Eventually they decided getting tangled up was fun, and so they tangled all up together. This was definately the funnest part of the day. If I did this theme for preschool again, I would string the web around household objects, or with stakes in the grass, and let them climb over and around.

And here's some bug songs I reccomend:

Bumblebee (Buzz Buzz) by Laurie Berkener Band

Ladybug by The Terrible Two's

and of course Flight of the Bumblebee by Beethoven

And for bug songs set to popular songs, consult this list of bug songs. We sang "Head, Thorax, Abdomen" set to the tune of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. And "Baby Bumblebee." And "Bug Song" - a variation of "Oh I wish I were a little racy car..." a camp classic.

On wednesday I'm teaching the sounds Ph and gh that make the F sound- and then I'm done! No more preschool for me until....next year, maybe?

Oh! and I'm B minus 2 weeks now. Maybe I should buy some diapers, or something, in case little man decides to arrive early?

Christmas Crafts: Calendar

I finally distributed the last of the christmas presents, so I can post about some of the other gifts I made.

Every year I do a calendar, for the past two I've done two seperate calendars for each side of the family. This year I only got to one.

Here's the details of my operation: I use Microsoft Publisher, because I know it and I have it. I print on cardstock on my printer, that's a pretty nice one. (I've printed with laser printers on glossy paper too, and I like the way the photos look better, but the trip to Kinkos or Printing shop was kind of a huge hassle).

I bind the pages with my Bind it all, an O-wire binding tool.

My layout for the Daley family calendar, is landscape, with pictures on the top page, and a full calendar for each month on the bottom page.

Each family (7 of them in all) gets a month, then the other 5 are specialty ones- their themes include/have included the following:

• Reunion page of pictures of us all together
• History page from z John's parent's (this year was about the 1960's/their teenage years, years past were about ancestors with dates/small history)
• Quotes page where each family member is asked the same question (this year was "What do you want on your own private island?"
• Halloween page of costumes
• Pictures from Christmas time/playing in the snow
• Portrait gallery
• Small cousins in various dressup costumes
• All the babies born that year

This was the cover this year. The theme was "Daleytown Island"- Each page's theme was a location on the island. A spa, a shooting range, a christmas forest, a school, a bakery, etc.

One of the highlights of this year was having John's mother, Linda, write an essay about the 1960's, which includes her romance and marriage to Richard, John's father. This time included his mission to Beunos Aires, so we included a copy of his mission identification from the First Presidency. I love hearing people's romance stories, and they have a classic one: high school sweethearts.

I'd include pictures of all the family members, but I'm lazy. Here's our page. You can see how I use digital scrapbooking kits to border the pictures and accent. I've gotten every piece of digital paper and embellishments free- by using digifree.blogspot.com. They list the freebies people are giving away each day. You have to weed through the ok ones and the freebies that are just layouts, but it's worth the effort in my experience.

For my parent's calendar, I do each page with our family, and it's more themed around the activities of each month, with whatever pictures of them I've taken through the year.

If you're thinking about doing this for your family- it's great! The only thing- it will take some time, especially if gathering pictures from family members does not include blog picture snatching. I start in September, and do it occasionally on Sunday afternoons and after the kids are in bed. Then it's not stressful and most of the calendar's done before Thanksgiving.

Any questions?

"Where is Jamie?"

Before we moved the girls and I did crafts in the morning before we packed. One week we were supposed to do farm crafts...but a horse craft we did totally flopped, but this one worked.

Here's a pop up book we made.



First we folded 8 1/2 by 11 cardstock in half.
Second, drew farm scenes on one side of each page. (Garden, Henhouse, barn, pond, orchard, doghouse and pig pen)
Third, cut out a door from each one, using an exacto knife.



Next we folded the paper under, and drew an animal where the door opens.

We colored the hiding animal, and folded over the paper and glued together.

After it dried, I added text and a cardboard cover, then bound it using my bind it all.

The girls LOVED giving me ideas for the different scenes, and deciding what the story was. And coloring it in. We chose "Where is Jamie?" (Jamie is my parent's golden retriever). The whole book is text asking "Where is Jamie" with the tabs showing different animals in their habitats. Then the last page has Jamie in his dog house.

Making a flap book like this would be great for a group of children, having each one draw or color a scene or page.

It's so rewarding writing your own story, try it sometime!

Valentines Crafts

Here's what our valentine's day looked like:

First, some pick up lines for our family and my visiting teachees


Was your dad a baker? Because baby you've got some buns

If you were a booger i'd pick you first.

If you want a copy of the publisher file, let me know.

Second, we made some valentine's cards with heart foamie stickers from Target dollar spot. I love simple designs, and it was fun to do some horizontal creativity and figure out all the things hearts could be. (Balloons, flowers, game pieces)


The pinata below is from us, we paper mache'd a balloon, painted it red, added some glitter and foam hearts, and streamers. Then we popped the balloon inside.

We also made some mailboxes on Family Home Evening night, with some cards to deliver to each other.

Happy Valentine's Day!