Fall Bulletin Board Idea

I love coming up with my bulletin boards in my classroom each month and thought I would post my October board. A simple yet cute bulletin board idea for your classroom!

"LET'S HAVE A BALL AS WE ENTER FALL!!"

Chocolate Pudding Art

For the beginning of October I'm having my students create a huge "Chocolate Pudding Pumpkin Patch" in our classroom! But I had never done the first and most important part of this art before, the chocolate pudding part! So I did mini versions at home with my own kids to have them test it out! They were all for it of course!

So first off you simply make chocolate pudding. My recipe called for 3 cups of milk but I'm not about to waste that much milk on something I'm not eating so I made it with 2 cups of water and 1 cup of milk so it would at least keep it's creamy texture. Once it's made you simply slop a little on some paper (I recommend card stock so your paper won't rip to pieces with the moisture). Then swirl around! I had a basting brush that has individual plastic strands that we used and it created beautiful swishes and swirls! However for my toddlers I had little plastic cars that are easy to clean that they drove through the pudding! And of course you always had a couple of them that were far more interested in painting with their hands so they could then lick the remains off! This is the beauty of this art project - it's safe if your baby attempts to eat the paint!

Here was my daughter's painting. The first one, pictures above, was my son's.

And this was mine! Took about 5 seconds to make. Now if they're older and you are trying to make a more "accurate" pumpkin patch have them make straight lines of rows like a real field would be.


Next, since again this was a smaller version I found some print-outs online of scarecrows and pumpkins. My children picked which scarecrow they wanted and then they colored away! I also had them cut all of them out and glue them on their chocolate pudding (once it was dry). And their chocolate pudding pumpkin patch was complete:

My daughter's.

My son's.

My son wanted his taken in the window too :)

Now at my school each day was a different art project to add to our creation. First we did chocolate pudding art on a big sheet of bulletin board paper. The next day we sponge painted pumpkins. I used big star burst sponge brushes but any kind of sponge or other paint option will do!

Next came our scarecrows. I found a cute scarecrow and had each child water paint them. I was going to try to have them "water paint" with ice cubes but couldn't get the ice cubes made on time this year. Maybe next year.

Then just to make it look nicer I matted the kids pumpkins with some green paper. And then stick them all on your dry chocolate pudding!

For one and two year old kids - this was a BLAST! And they love it hanging in our room because they can point at them all day and you can go over and reiterate the names of each thing and the colors. As for my own kids smaller versions I'm probably hanging them on their bulletin boards or perhaps sending them to the grandparents as a "Happy Fall" picture!

Either way or on either scale it's SO fun and your kids freak out a little when you hand them chocolate pudding to PAINT with!

A craft for the season - WHOO WHOO!

In case you couldn't tell by my lack of posts I'm working full-time now as a Day School Teacher of 1-2 year-olds. Yes insanity at it's best!! However I've had so much fun finding cute crafts for these little ones to do and the best part is that almost all of them can be altered to fit older kids too. Such as this owl craft.

For my little students I cut out the parts and they just glued them on. However for older kids, such as my own kiddos, I had them cut out their own pieces.

Here's what you'll need:
- Brown Paper Bag
- Brown Construction Paper
- White Construction Paper
- Orange Construction Paper
- Black Sharpie Marker (or regular black marker if older kids are doing it themselves)
- Scrap paper or old magazine
- Brown String
- Tacky Glue (or regular Elmer's but tacky seems to hold better)

And here's what to do:
1. Cut out a brown triangle that fits from one corner of the bottom of the bag to the other corner and the point goes down to the crease in the bag. (bag is still flat at this point, don't open yet). Glue on as the beak.
2. Cut out two white circles and glue on each side of beak.
3. With marker make a circle in the middle of the eye and then lines coming out from circle to edge of white circle.
4. Also with marker make V's all over bottom 2/3 of bag to make the owl's feathers.
5. Cut out two orange feet and glue on facing up the bag. once dry fold the bottom part down so they stick out like feet. You'll glue them on about 2/3 a way down the bag.
6. Wait for all glue to dry.
7. Open bag and using scrap paper or pages of old magazine have kids crumple up paper into balls and stuff bag a little more than 2/3 full.
8. Once nice and stuffed, gather the bottom of the bag and tie tightly with string. Bend up and towards the back to make a little owl tail.
(sometimes you have to work the bottom of the bag a bit to get it somewhat flat and the feet right once stuffed.) Oh and the one on the right was a trial owl - we learned that using yellow makes it look "duck-like" so I recommend the brown and orange :)

And voila! WHOO -WHOO -WHHHOOOOO!

A seasonal craft for you and your little one to enjoy!

Silent Sunday

My crazy idea and my dad's photographic talent! Here are some FUN photos we took at White Sands this summer! (these are the ones I promised I would post)