Back to School Wreath

The Friday before school started, life was beyond chaotic, my house was a mess, there probably was a baby crying, but I came up with a wreath idea and wanted to make it before school started. So I did. And guess what when I finished the house was still a mess, a baby was probably sleeping, everyone else was coloring with crayons. 

Since I used the same polka dots from father's day, the wreath was quite easy. I took a pin and poked holes through the crayons at the same point, and then took fishing line and beads to make my crayon bunting. It was very easy. All the kids wanted to help, no one was allowed, I worked at the bar while everyone else had to color at the table. I'm mean like that.

Its so cheery and jaunty. I looking at it.

Teacher Gifts-- Cookies

Remember how I'm insane and sewed a million teacher gifts at christmas time?  Well I thought the end of the year also deserved a thanks.  This time I did not hand write thank you notes, like I did at christmas time.
I made homemade chocolate chip cookies for nine teachers, and I do make dang good chocolate chip cookies if I do say so myself.  (Or if I listen to all my friends.) Although I only had time for one batch, so they each only got 5 cookies, but I figured that was actually plenty.

This time I borrowed this graphic for the front of the card, and typed a canned message of my appreciation, printed it all out, and then folded up the paper.

Afterward I wondered if I was crazy.  I was talking to my husband about it, and he didn't seem to think it was odd at all I gave gifts to all the specials teachers.  Then I started thinking about it.  A few days ago, I talked to J's librarian for about 5 minutes. Five minutes was all it took to be extremely grateful this woman is in my son's life. She said how fun he was, and how she mentioned in the beginning of the year to the GT teacher he needed to be tested.  She said, "He is something else", smiling, "I'll ask a question, and call him and he will pause and say, well it will take a minute to explain."  I thought I'm so grateful she finds it endearing, because my husband and I struggle with this trait.  Point being, I'm so grateful for great teachers in his life.  As the librarian talked about him, I thought if this was Anne of Green Gables, they would be "kindred spirits". He keeps talking about how excited he is to be a first grader to because he gets to check out two books a week.
P.S.  I used Ghirardelli chocolate chips hoping for something that tastes better than Nestle, and the chips never stopped melting, and reset up.  Hours later, they were still gooey mess.  For some that might be good, for my children they found it annoying.

Summer School

My son is doing school every week day this summer.  Well maybe not everyday, if we have something planned for the morning we'll skip it, and for other reasons. Want to know the main reason he is doing school work all summer, it has nothing to do with the statistic that he will lose 30% of his knowledge over the summer.  It has to do with he drives me crazy when his life is unstructured.  He cries, and whines, and so he is DOING school. He is too precocious for our own good.  This is what I came up with a school jar. 

 Each activity has a clothes pin and he picks two a day.  Once he has done all his clothespins, he puts them back and and we start over.  I thought this would be effective because some of the school activities he does not like, but those are the ones he actually needs to work on over the summer.  This way it is not me assigning it, it is him picking it. If he wants to do more than two work activities a day then, he can earn his quarter to put towards buying new books. His dad decided he could do math worksheet to earn new books.  Yes, we have a reader on our hands, but he also likes to do math too.  Each worksheet is worth a quarter.

I also made a Learning Jar for my daughter.  I don't care if she uses it but I didn't want her to feel left out.  It has more than coloring, things I want her to learn over the summer like counting to 10, recognizing numbers, writing N, learning phonic sounds of some letters.  My husband wondered why I didn't have learn ABCs on one, I said I don't want her to learn the names of the letters until she knows the noises they make.   When I read alphabet books with my toddlers I don't say A is for, I say, ahh (the sound of A) is for. But her jar has fun things too, like stickers, cover the page in stickers, she is only 3.
Would you like to know what my son has to do this summer?

• Writing Page (Describe ___ use at least 4 sentences) He does not like this assignment, hopefully him picking the topics will help.
• Reading what he chooses, and then telling me the summary, and main idea
• Bridge Book (a workbook we bought from school)
• Learn to Tie Shoes
• Debate  my husband came up with this (this is he gives me 5 pro or cons of the a topic, for example why is it good to play outside) (We are working on explanation and comprehension this summer.  We know he is comprehending but his teacher will want evidence he is understanding, so he needs to work on explaining.)
• Dictionary my husband came up with this.  He has a elementary school dictionary, he will have to look up a word, write how to spell the word, and what the word means.  Hopefully as the summer goes on he can summarize the definition instead of copy.
• Math worksheets
• Science, I haven't really planned what this means yet, but he loves science
• Maybe I should add, practice riding a bike.  Especially the two wheeler not the training wheel one.  Then again any pedaling motion he does, I am relieved about. No scooter allowed.

Teacher Gifts

 The other day at staples I was looking for christmas cards to give to my son's teachers, but they were so expensive! Then I found red thank you cards and a light bulb went off in my head! I found these printables online and made my cards.  (Isn't the internet great, people so willing to share their talents.) I thought they were perfect because the whole reason you give teachers gifts is to say thank you. 

 I ended up making more cards to give to my sunbeam parents.  It was a hard half year for me which I think the parents knew, but I wanted the parents to know I appreciated teaching the kids, because it taught me so much about our Savior's love for us.
But back to the teachers, so my son has a kindergarten teacher who teaches two half day classes so she teaches 45 student every day, then she has a full time teaching assistant, who goes to church with us and all the kids absolutely love her. So in addition to the ornaments, I also made them ruffle scarfs. There are so many tutorials out there about how to do ruffles easily.  I tried so many and none worked, I went through so much thread on the first one. It took me about 2 hours, the second one took me 15 minutes.  So easy once I figure out the best way to ruffle on my machine.  I just wadded it up and tried sewing in a straight line. Yeah like the tutorial for ruffle scarf says, I should have listened instead of trying everyone else methods. I absolutely love the one on the left and wanted to keep it for myself.  I can't wait to make myself a ruffle scarf, they are so trendy. But who knows if the teachers like them.  Oh well not my problem.

Christmas Insanity

Sometimes I have insane ideas, like being so impressed with my son's teachers.  As a five year old you would be amazed at how many he has.  A kindergarten teacher, a kindergarten assistant, a PE teacher, an Art teacher, a Music teacher, two librarians, a counselor (who meets with them every other week, to teach good citizen lessons), a technology teacher, and a primary (church) teacher, who he adores. That is ten teachers, I obviously couldn't buy ten presents, even at $5 a piece that is $50, but lets be honest by the time you add in the .99, and tax, it would be much closer to $75.  But I still wanted to do something for them. I've been super impressed with all his special teachers, he LOVES specials of course, but the surprising thing is, most of the teachers know him by name!  How a teacher who see 500 kids a week, knows the name of one kindergarten is beyond me, but I'm grateful for their effort.  I loved specials as a child, but they weren't actually fun, nor did the teachers ever know me even after years of seeing them.  It was a lot of alphabetical order and teachers not letting us talk. They have enough xylophones for every student in music class AND they actually get to play them on a regular basis! His tech teacher, encourages them to walk around the room and see what their friends are doing on the computer, she believes computer time should be a social thing, you should never do it alone.  Nor do they have sit, they can stand at their computer the whole time if they want.  Let me assure you I was not allowed out of my seat in computer lab, only occasionally did we try to whisper to the person above or below us in alphabetical order. So what I decided I could do was make them ornaments.  I made ten ornaments by hand!  What was I thinking?  That I was really impressed with these ladies, and it was the only thing I could do was to make them something out of my scrap material.

 The worst part was cutting out the material, but I endured and I made them each a flower ornament. Then I wrote them each a thank you not/happy holidays card telling them how I appreciated them in my son's life.

 But then I loved the flowers so much I made to make one for me!

On a side not encase you didn't realize how awesome our school is, he goes to most of his specials twice a week next year once he goes to full day school.  He has six specials that is more than one a day, and then half of them he will go to twice a week next year.  Yeah its a great school.  Not surprisingly we have less homework, shorter days and the highest test scores in the Springs area.  (That and affluent population, although we hardly THE richest school district.)


And if you look at the four posts previous to this, you now know why this is titled Christmas Insanity. 

preschool apron

About last week at this time I realized every year of elementary school my mother would send me to school with a potted plant or two depending on how many teachers I had.  Every year I gave my teachers a potted plant.  Which mean my son needed a christmas present for his teachers!  Ahh, what was I going to do?  My mom would have told me to go buy a potted plant, live flowers are pretty much her advice on everything.  But kill all live plants, so I couldn't in good conscious give J's teachers one.  Instead I made a hostess apron for them, because thats what I do.  My mom takes care of live plants, and I make aprons. I also didn't have time to go to the store so I had to figure out what I had on hand that would work.  This is all I could come up with. I like it.

Time was growing short, and I didn't have any other material that matched in a big enough piece, so instead of making a second for the assistant teacher I gave her this one. I'm super lame, I know.  But she is young and thin, so I figured she could work it.  I had two aprons with the same  material and I never ever wore this one except for the picture, so I did give her a new apron.  J also picked out hand soap for the teachers because he wanted to give them soap with the apron.  I don't know what is acceptable present, I didn't know if just hand soap worked?!