Year: 2014

21 Frozen Party Ideas

Here are 21 Frozen Party Ideas I used for a winter party in my classroom, since we went offtract the first week in December. I also had a Frozen party for my 6 little grandkids. We had one Weekend all my kids were together for the holidays. And I can tell you we sure had a lot of fun at both parties!

A Fun Frozen Party Game is Pin the Nose on Olaf

5 Crafts to Make 

1. Blue, glittery slime making. Check out the recipe HERE is the recipe.

To make this slime recipe you will need…
  • 1 Part Elmers Clear School Glue
  • 1 Part Liquid Starch
  • food coloring and glitter

2. Snowflake Making using coffee filters – fold a coffee filter once like a taco, twice like a piece of pizza and a third time like an ice cream cone. Cut out little triangles along both sides leaving the tip and the curve alone. Unfold to reveal a snowflake!

Frozen Party Cookies – Make “Sven” Reindeer Cookies 

3. Face Painting using glittery stencils. I found some really easy glitter stencils at Target for $6.00. They include 3 colors of glitter, stencils and a tiny bottle of face glue and a powder  paintbrush to dab on the glitter. They are reusable! HERE are some from Kohls. They were easy and the girls loved them!

Here is the Kit I used for Glitter Face Painting. It was $6.00 at Target. I recently found another one for $5.00 at T.J. Max. They had a Frozen Glitter Tattoo Art Kit at Kohls for $9.00 recently too. Check it out HERE.
Glitter Face Painting for the Frozen Winter Party. It was a fun activity. 
Glitter Face Tattoos. Marisa wanted a peace sign. She was probably thinking of Peace on Earth! 

My cute granddaughter I did some swirls and doo dads with makeup for the Frozen Face Painting. 

4 .White playdough with glitter “Snowball Playdough” and free printable tags for the playdough HERE at Yellow Bwnliss Road. I will just use ziplock bags and tape the tags on. If you make this at home you could use little baby food jars and wrap a blue glittery ribbon around each one with the cute tags. Tutorial for easy Playdough is HERE at Patties Classroom.

KOOL-AID PLAY DOUGH RECIPE (for snowballs leave white)
                                 
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
2 pkg kool-aid (unsweetened) Use blue raspberry for blue dough     2 tablespoons cream of tarter
Mix together then add in:
2 cups boiling water
3 tablespoons oil

Mix and knead for 4 minutes or until cool. 
We mixed it all in the Mixmaster for 4 minutes. Easy Peasy! 


5. Make a bracelet using white, light and dark blue, and purple and pink beads and chenille stems. Add an enamel snowflake in purple, blue or pink to each one.  These are easy to make for even young children. Use pony beads from the craft store or walmart. The faceted clear beads in blue and purple are pretty to use too. Get the enameled snowflakes from Oriental Trading for $6.50 for a dozen charms. Or find them at a bead store.

Make bracelets from pony beads and chenille stems. These were green ones for earth day we did in April, but I’ve done them for Valentines with red, pink and white, for Easter in pastels and Pirate day in black and white. They are really easy for kids to make. Use special foam beads from Oriental trading for more choices in beads. 

 4 Fun Games to Play

6. Snowball bowling with white whiffle balls. Use printables taped on each blue, plastic cup and draw numbers on each cup for challenge points. Kids could add them up to see who has more points. I taped OLAF cupcake toppers  on 10 blue plastic cups.

Frozen Party Games – Snowball Bowling 

I placed 4 on the bottom, then 3, then 2 then one on top to knock over or to bowl.  I bought a few bags of white whiffle balls to use as snowballs from the dollar store. But then at the last minute I couldn’t find them. I think I put them in a “safe place” I wouldn’t forget. Do you ever do that too? haha. So at the last minute I raided the white socks drawer and put 1/2 cup of rice in each old, white sock and then tied a knot. It worked great! Simply made bean bags!

Frozen Party Games – Snowball Rolling or Throwing was a blast! 
We tried putting these cups in the traditional bowling pattern but it wasn’t as fun as the loud CRASH effect you got when you threw the beanbags. I think with whiffle balls it may have worked to bowl. 
My kindergarten kids LOVED this game. And my 2 year old grandson loved it too. Every time we set up the cups he would sneak over and knock them over before anybody got a chance. It was so funny!
I made these white “snowball beanbags” at the last minute with 1/2 cup of rice in old socks. They worked great! 
Prizes for the Frozen Party were card games, pencil and eraser sets, books, blue and pink mini-finger polish and giant, blue gumballs in a tall jar. 

7. Pin the nose on Olaf the Snowman. Olaf coloring page is HERE. Blow it up using an overhead projector and blue paper or blue fabric for pin the nose on Olaf.

Pin the Nose on Olaf game. I used a document camera to blow up a coloring page of Olaf HERE at Family Disney.  Then I traced it and cut it out and glued it on a blue poster board and added black buttons and eyebrows and stick arms.

Punch out some die cut snowflakes or make some out of white paper to put around the edges. I made up the sign too for this “station” or center.

Pin the Nose on Olaf Game was the sweetest game to watch the kids do. All the kids who played it had a blast.

Cut out the carrot noses for Pin the Nose on Olaf. Let kids write their own names on them with black Sharpie. Then give them a piece of tape and cover their eyes with a sweater cap or snow hat, twirl them a few times and let em go!

My littlest granddaughter in her Frozen costume from Halloween. Super cute! 
In my classroom we wrote about “People Who are Worth Melting For”. We had everything from dogs to little sisters and of course grandma and grandpa! 
Olaf Frozen Art Project turned out easy peasy. I had the shapes cut out. (3 white ovals sized properly, orange carrots, white tooth, black mouth shape. Kids did arms, eyes, and glued on round black paper buttons. I die cut snowflakes and each got two to paste on. I would add 2 round legs next time and a few black sticks of hair. 
Cute little Olaf the Snowman Art – I forgot about his hair though! My bad. 
This is kindergarten writing. I am very proud of my kiddos! 
Great handwriting guys! Woo Hoo! 
Olaf the Snowman makes a very Cute Kindergarten art project! We just forgot to add 2 legs and hair! Woops! 

 Some cute stationery with lots of FROZEN ideas and free printables I found HERE at Frugal Homeschool. The paper below I just added an Olaf free printable HERE to some cute paper I already had. Then I typed “Some People are Worth Melting For” on the bottom.

Who do you think is Worth Melting For?  I have all of these Olaf art projects and writing ready to go for an after the holiday bulletin board! They will go up on the wall in January. 

 8. Freeze Dancing to “Let it Go” song. Play the song and let everybody dance or move around the room. Then quickly stop music and everybody freezes. It is fun. Good 1st game for ice breaker.

Frozen Bingo Game was fun. We used calling cards with the characters written on them. 

 9.  Play FROZEN Bingo. The free printable Bingo Cards are HERE at Oh My Fiesta. I made a few extra copies and cut and pasted a few of the pictures in 2 of them (since there are only 3 unique cards) so I could have 5 cards. Then I glued them on cardstock and put them in page protectors to play the game in my classroom.

To Play FROZEN BINGO, I put out little cups of blue Hersey’s kisses with snowflakes on them. They were great for Bingo Markers. 
I found Frozen Fruit Snacks to use for prizes for the Frozen Bingo Game. I also found a big bag of giant, light blue bubble gum balls and put them in a tall jar. The kids could choose gum or fruit snacks when they won a round of Frozen Bingo. 

 The only bad thing about this game is that there are only 3 picture cards and I needed at least 5 cards. So I printed out 2 of each and then cut out a few squares and changed positions with 2 of the 6 cards. Then I glued each onto light blue cardstock and put each into a page protector so it would keep its shape. I used the words on the 4th Bingo card as calling cards.

Party Snacks and Foods

10. Blue Jello Squares. Just use half the water to make jiggler jello. Cut into squares and place in a bowl.

Frozen Party Food Table; we had gummy bears and Jelly beans, M and Ms, Gumdrops, Carrots, donuts, Chex Mix, Taquitos and Guacamole (forgot to take a picture). You could also order a few pizzas and make your life easy. I make some killer guac so I had frozen chicken taquitos in the oven ready to go. 

11. Carrots “Olaf  Noses” and apples and fresh oranges sliced up were easy and healthy snacks. I bought Chex Mix and had Candy for decorating Olaf the Snowman and Sven the Reindeer.

I had a bowl of baby carrots (Olaf noses) and this big bowl of Chex Mix as well as cut up fruits on the snack table. 
I printed out a cute little OLAF printout and taped it to the Blue Hawaiian Punch. The blue gumballs and kisses are in the background and front area. 

12. Punch Blue High C or Hawaiian Punch (Blue colored) with 7 up or Sprite.

13.Kettle Corn Popcorn Balls or Colored White and light blue Chocolate Popcorn. You can also drizzle with  Blue candy melts in the Popcorn.

  (Just melt a 1/2 cup of blue disks in the microwave. Then drizzle over microwaved popcorn). In my classroom I just did 4 bags of kettle corn and gave each table a bag and a big plate of cut up fruits. 
SVEN Cookies from Frozen made from Nutter Butter Cookies. These were easy for even the very youngest of my grandkids to make with just a little bit of help with the icing. The nose and eyes are mini M and Ms. The antlers are small pretzels. The moms just put a blob of icing where needed. 
The “SVEN” Reindeer Cookies turned out pretty cute. Kids made these! 

13. Sven (Nutter Butter Peanut Butter Cookies) cookies with round pretzel antlers and M & M nose and eyes. Even my two youngest granddaughters could do it with mom’s help (2 year olds).

I got these cute, blue, square plates from Target. I placed all the things needed to make the Sven cookies and the Olaf donut snowmen on the plate for each partygoer. 
The Olaf Donut men had 2 toothpicks ( I used colorful ones) and 2 orange Mike and Ikes for the nose and belly button. Then M and Ms were eyes and buttons and a gummy bear cut down the middle (not all the way) and opened up, made the “scarf”. 

14. Olaf powdered donut making. Use 2 white mini donuts, a Mike and Ike nose and belly button in orange, Little mini M and Ms for eyes and buttons, break off a curved pretzel for smile, and use colorful toothpicks for arms. Easy!

Olaf the Snowman Donut Making Station….These cute plates and cups were from Target too. I love their children’s dinnerware. They are SO cute and inexpensive I have a set of 4 for just about every holiday. 
Olaf Donut Snowmen and Sven Reindeer Cookies. The smile on Olaf is from a broken pretzel (just check the bottom of the bag!) and the “scarf” is a cup open Sour Patch Kids gummy. You could use just about anything; fruit roll ups would be good too, or gummy worms cut down the middle. 

15 White Cheese Sticks with Olaf stickers on them or Olaf face drawn with markers.

Loving Mountain Life  had a cute idea to use Sharpies to draw Olaf on some white mozzarella cheese sticks. Here is a picture. I ran out of time. But these would be good to add a healthy snack to your treat table! 
Frozen Party Fun-To-Make Treats

 I popped a box of Chicken Taquitos in the oven and made ahead some fresh guacamole.The moms and dads loved the taquitos and guacamole and you don’t need extra plates since they are a finger food. I also bought a bag of Chex Mix and a package of mini carrots (Olaf noses) for munching.  At school we had orange and apple slices and microwave Kettle corn. You could also add pizzas.

Frozen Christmas Tree….Keep Calm and Let The Storm Rage On…..Good advice! 

3 Party Invites and Take Home Favors.

16. Coloring Pages HERE at Media Cache. I used for the party invitations for my FROZEN party. I added a date and time and what to wear/bring. Also you could  send coloring pages and some colors home as a party favor. More coloring pages can be found HERE.

I found all these FROZEN coloring pages online as free printables. I had the kids come choose one of these and color while they were eating their finished donuts and treats.
17. Party favors could be “make a snowman” kits with bag toppers. The kit includes 3 large marshmallows, 2 pretzel sticks, some mini chocolate chips for eyes, mini M and Ms for buttons and an orange Mike and Ike for a nose, and 2 toothpicks for arms. I used colorful toothpicks.  
I bought giant coloring books for my grandkids in the dollar section at Target. They included a little tiny pack of colors! SCORE! For my classroom kids I just had snowman baggies and we put candy and little chocolate marshmallow snowmen inside each one along with some Hershey’s kisses, and gumballs. 
I had these out at my Frozen Party for my grandkids. Mostly because I had bought 2 of each for my granddaughters and I mentally noted which one each wanted. Then I wrapped them up for Christmas presents! SCORE AGAIN! 

18. Build your own candy buffet take-home bag. I tried to keep the table blue and silver with blue and silver candies Kisses, light blue, giant, bubble gum balls, candy suckers or ring pops in blue too. Provide “snowflake” type bags with twisty ties. Check out bulk candy in the supermarket for “blue” candy ideas. I liked THESE Lolly Cubes blue, cube-shaped suckers. Or try These blue raspberry gummies. I used blue bubble gum balls and blue chocolate kisses and blue dum dum suckers and a big jar of marshmallows. Display them in clear, decorative cookie jars and vases with “scoops”.

I tried to copy this and do a “blue candy” table but I just ended up using lots of snacks and candy. It was really fun anyway. Nobody cares if you do your own thing and add your favorite candy. Kids will love any kind of candy or treats you come up with! I promise! I’ve been a teacher 20 years. 

3 MORE TAKE HOME TRINKETS: 

19. HERE at Our Thrifty Ideas  is a treat bag topper you can print out and fill with marshmallows, pretzel sticks and chocolate chips to make a “take home”snowman. But you can find all sorts of free printables to use as free take home fun. All you need are some ziplock baggies.

This would be a great take home Frozen Party Gift baggie full of ABC Flashcards with the Frozen theme. These were FREE PRINTABLES! Ye Ha! HERE is the link at Delicate Construction.

20. Match Game in a baggie for take home fun. Frozen Party match game can be found HERE. This one was a store bought game from Target. It was little cardboard squares, very durable. I’ve used it on rainy days in my classroom for recess time. The kids all love it.

This was a Frozen match game I found for $3.00 at Target in the Dollar section up front. We played this one while we were at one of the stations when they finished early making snowflakes. We never used the card game which was also $3.00, but I’m still working on that. It was a great prize so I bought several. 

21. Color some Frozen Movie Coloring Pages HERE while eating Kettle Corn and white chocolate dipped pretzels. You could also roll up a few coloring pages for take home gifts and attach a small 8 pack of crayons to each. Crayons go on sale before school starts for 25cents. I stock up and use them as gifts.

Coloring Pages. I think I had about 7 to choose from. I just made 5 copies of each since I had 23 classroom kids and 6 grandkids. 

This was one of the most fun parties I’ve ever planned. We made several videos of our fun time playing the games at the Frozen party. Check them out on Youtube. I should have them up very soon!

Santa Handprint Art and Letters

Don’t you LOVE handprint art done by kids? It is the CUUUUUTEST! Every year I make these “Santa” handprints and we write letters to Santa Claus. We always tell him how “good” we have been to butter him up for our requests!

Santa Handprints and Letters to Santa Claus done by Kindergarteners are super cute! 

This year nobody asked for anything outrageous. Mostly they asked for 1 gift. I liked that. I’m sure Santa will too. đŸ˜€

Dear Santa, We have been GOOD this year. For Christmas I want a…….(lots of good sight word practice is showing up here). HERE is a link to lots of “Dear Santa” books from Amazon too. 

Letters to Santa. We have been GOOD Santa! Don’t ya know? 

Here are some of our letters. The paper I got inside of a Scholastic book of stationery like this one HERE at Amazon. You can get it for a penny now! Woot!

My kinders are getting really good at letters now. We practice our writing every single day. 
Letters to Santa are always so cute. The top is a couple of gingerbread men and some candy canes to color. 
Everybody did a great job on their Santa Letters and Santa Handprints. I love them on our bulletin board outside our door! 
Letters to Santa. I hope we are not on the naughty list!! 

I used blue, red and green, glitter glue for the sparkly stars. You just paint the fingers white, the middle palm peachy, and the thumb area and base of palm red, for the Santa hat.

All We Want for Christmas  bulletin board outside in the school hall looks pretty cute. 
We’ve been seeing a lot of Santa this month. My granddaughters on the “Polar Express” in Lindon, Utah. They had fun chatting with him. 

This little one wants a drum set. She drew a picture of it for Santa so he doesn’t forget. So cute.

Santa Handprints will look so cute in our writing portfolio for the year! Along with our Santa letters of course! I hope everybody gets the things on their list this year! 

After white handprints are dry, just dip a fingertip in white 2  times for Santa’s white mustache, 1 fingertip white for the white pom pom on Santa’s hat tip, and 5 little white fingertips on the bottom rim of the Santa hat. Then dip little dots from the wooden top of a paintbrush for the 2 round eyes and a red nose. I did the eyes in geen this year.  If you use green paper background I’d do the eyes blue.

We did blue eyes a few years back. Check out more activities we did for Christmas last year HERE.
Some letters from the past. I liked this kind of paper too. But these kids could do a lot more writing in 2nd grade. 

SOME FUNNY SANTA JOKES: 

Q. What did Santa say to Mrs. Claus when he looked out the window? It looks like rain, dear! (reindeer). Get it? 
Q. What does Santa eat for breakfast? Frosted flakes! 
Q. Why does Santa love working in his garden? He likes to “hoe, hoe, hoe!” 
Q. Where does Santa keep his money? In a snow bank! 
Q. What does Santa plant in the fall? Christmas bulbs! haha. 

We will add these to our Writing Portfolio for December. Have some Happy Holiday everybody! I hope nobody gets on the naughty list!

Turkey Art Project from Colored Paper

One way to make really cute animals of any kind is to figure out some wacky looking eyeballs. I found a few cute and free printables for eyeballs that just MAKE these Thanksgiving Turkeys!

Turkey Art Project for Kinder Kids

I started by cutting out strips of 6 colors of butcher paper; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. We did all the colors of the rainbow. I cut them approximately 2 inches by 10 or 11 inches. If the kids are kinder age or younger, the shorter strips are easier for them to manipulate. If you have older kids you can go longer, maybe 14 inches.

Cut strips 2 inches by 11 inches for a small TURKEY art project. 

After cutting strips fold and glue the edges into “raindrop” shapes. 

Then we took each strip and made it into a “raindrop” shape by taking the two ends and gluing them together. We did that to all 6. Then we took 2 circles of brown for the head and body and glued them together. If your kids are young, glue them together for them before you start the project. I glued the kinder kids’ together before school started.

Turkey Art Project 

Cute Turkey Art for Kindergarten. 

I cut the 2 circles about 4 1/2 inches and 6 inches. Then we cut orange, triangle shaped beaks. I had about 10 styles of eyeballs for the kids to cut out. I got the eyeballs and I found, while looking for some eyeballs to download, some cute faces I could use for fast finishers HERE at Dabbles and Babbles. Kids LOVE putting faces on blank heads! This will make a great bribe to get a math quiz finished!

The eyeballs I found are HERE at Flamingo Toes. Another one I found HERE at Kiki Creates blog. Another blogger had such a cute post using wiggly eyeballs for a class behavior motivator. Her darling post is Here at Teacher to the Core. Check her printable eyeballs out HERE. Zombie eyeballs Here on TPT.

I had this book full of Eyeballs galore to choose from for our Thanksgiving Turkeys! 

Yellow Accordian legs 1/2  inch by about 10 or 11 inches and the feet I just cut out of orange construction paper. 

I have a book I bought years ago with black and white eyeballs that I also used. I will see if I can design something myself to add to this post. If you want you could also used wiggly eyes from the craft store instead. Oh and we added a red “waddle” or “gobble” or whatever you call it under the beak.

Kindergarten Turkey Art for Thanksgiving 

Anyway, glue the “feathers” on the back of the turkey in rainbow color order. (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue purple).  Add the eyeballs and beak. We added legs in yellow folded accordian style, and then feet cut out in orange. Older kids could cut out their own feet. I did 3 rectangular shaped toes on the orange feet.

My Class (minus a few who don’t want to be in pictures) with their Construction Paper Turkeys for Thanksgiving! 

Here are our finished colorful Thanksgiving Turkeys! Gobble Gobble!
Then we wrote what we are thankful for this year, after doing a whole class brainstorm on the board. The kindergarten kids wrote 4 things each, that they were thankful for, and they all had to start with the sight word “MY” for practice. We came up with things like “My home, my friends, my dog, my cat, my mom, my dad, my family, my video games, my dolls”. HERE is some cute Stationery to write on. It is below and is free.

I love this Veggie Turkey for Thanksgiving Day. Isn’t it so cute? Gotta try it! 

 I found the cute printables for many kinds of writing projects for Thanksgiving. I loved them all. The link is HERE at TPT on Debbie Palacios site.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody! 
Gobble Gobble! 

Lastly we played some Pilgrim and Pumpkin Roll and Cover games HERE at TPT.  I loved this one with the Old Lady Who Swallowed “Too Much Turkey and Pumpkin Pie” for Thanksgiving. It has a really cute visual for adding up 2 dice. It is HERE at Mrs. Lirettes Learning Blog. My kids LOVED playing it during center time. Have a nice Thanksgiving Holiday everyone! Gobble Gobble.

A Funny Story and Ugly Sweater Parties

Friday in my class we were doing turkeys for art. I was listening to the chit chat at one of the all-boy tables. It was quite hysterical. I just HAD to share the funny banter.  This is what it is like being a teacher. It will tickle your funny bone!

Downtown at Abravenal Hall to see the genius comic “Jim Gaffigan, Dad is FAT” show. 

“Hey Mrs. Moss did you know my mom is pregnant?” another child rebuts with “Hey MY dad is the President!!” another child “YOUR dad is American?” another child “My dad is the judge!” Another child says “Hey, but MY dad works at McDonalds, I saw him there when I was a little kid!” Everything went silent for a few seconds while the kids pondered that revelation…..

Funny Monkey stocking I saw yesterday at Hobby Lobby. It just cracked me up! I love Christmas stockings for kids. I’d buy a new set every year if I could! 

. I just HAD to stop and write it all down. 1 minute of kinder kid discussion and wit.  Unbelievable. These kids could be doing stand up comedy! They all stopped in awe of the lucky McDonald’s kid. Tee Hee. Oh this made me chuckle today! And #McDonalds, take note!

I was dinkin’ around Hobby Lobby yesterday and these ugly sweater party invitations and decorations caught my eye. HOW FUN IS THAT?!?  I want to have an Ugly Sweater Par-tay! I have plenty of them to decide between, that’s FOR SURE! (And I could dress the hubs up funny too, lol.)
Ugly Sweaters are the BOMB! I Agree! 
Cute Snowman in his ugly sweater holding your cookies for your Ugly Sweater Party… tee hee. Gotta Love it! 
Me and the hubs enjoyin’ life and laughing our guts out with Jim Gaffigan last week. Happy Holidays!!  And Happy Ugly Sweater Parties one and all!

Sight Word Lists – Make a Rainbow

Here is the Sight Word Rainbow for our class to use to see who is learning all their Kindergarten sight words from the list. I put the words in a listing order from easy to harder with some color words sprinkled in. Most of these words make up the 50 most used words in Children’s Literature. So it is super smart to memorize them for reading fluency.

Class Sight Word Rainbow. Add your “sun” with YOUR name on it as soon as you learn the words in List 1.  (is, it, in, on, no, of, us, as, an am, at, the). Each list has 12 words for 72 total. 

If you help your kids learn these words, they will become better readers. It is plain and simple. Sight words are words that are harder to sound out and are better learned my rote memorization.

We have 5 kids so far that have put their “sun” up on the red part of the rainbow, having memorized the first word list of 2 letter words and THE. The words are listed on the back of the homework folder in 5 lists. These kids won a red piece of licorice. Let’s see how many we can get up on the rainbow by Thanksgiving!

Math Add and Subtract Mats and Counters

My friend Kim Metcalf gave me some really cute ideas for making up couting bins for fast finishers.
I made up a few and use them daily instead and hand each one out to a table of 4-5 kids during math time so they can use them in their counting.  They love them! 

The first one is a gumball machine and pom pom counters. Here at Mrs. Byrds Kinder  is a cute gumball machine to use with some Walmart pom poms as a counter mat and counters for kindergarten or first grade.

The kids love when it is their turn to use the colorful pom poms! 

Gumball math mat with pom poms for the gumballs! 

 Byrd’s Kinder had a cute gumball machine I shrunk and made up 6 for a center table. AND it’s a great idea to use later for a behavior motivator for some of my harder kiddos. I would just shrink it a bit more and use dot stickers. 
Birthday Cake math mat with counters made from Dollar Store birthday candles (80 for $1.00!) I got the math mat blackline HERE at Activity Village. They also had some free math downloads that were cute on the birthday cake theme. 

The Fabulous First Grade website had some cute candy corn math activities you could add for fun to these candy corn counters. I just used a black haunted house for these and sometimes used dried lima beans one side spray painted orange. Fun for October. Maybe some haystacks with candy corn for November? 

I’m going to try pizzas next and cut up felt pieces for the counters shaped like pepperoni, sausage, tomatoes, olives etc. I’ll post the pictures when I get it done.

Another one I made was a T-shirt with colorful buttons. I made my t-shirts out of colorful felt. A printable t-shirt is HERE. The buttons I bought are HERE at Amazon.
ROYLCO R2131 Bright Buttons, Assorted Sizes, Shapes and Color, 1/2-Pound

I found a free printable ladybug to use with my black dry beans as a counting mat. It is HERE at the Measured Mom. I got the dry, black beans at the market.
 
Kindergarten math mats to use with black bean counters.

Then another one  was a bin of tiny shells I’ve had for many years. I used sandpaper and blue foam shaped like a “fishbowl” for the mats. I’m trying to decide which ones the kids like better. I hope they are careful with my little shells!

 Sandpaper and blue foam fishbowl math mats with shell counters.

 I don’t know which ones the kids like better so I made a few of each.

Here is the Christmas tree and the Ladybug mats. I just backed them with red cardstock and laminated. I must have forgotten to take a pic of the Hobby Lobby Christmas doo dads. They were only $1.99 for a package of about 60 little ornaments. 

The kids’ favorite this week was a new one I just put out for Christmas, since we go off track in less than 2 weeks they won’t get to use it for long. It is a Christmas tree. The mat is HERE. Then I went over to Hobby Lobby and found a package of Christmas colorful foam pieces that looked like ornaments and candy for the counters. They are super cute. The kids LOVE them.

This mat is from Prekinders.com

The last counters I bought have a space theme and then I found Christmas Checkers. I haven’t figure out what to do with either of these yet. Still thinking of a cute mat. Any ideas?

I found a snowflake mat that might work for these chips. I can also use some tiny foam snowflakes for it. It is HERE at Prekinders. I printed off page 11 that had “10 snowflakes” and we can use addends of 10 to count with on this mat.  There are many other “grid” counting mats that I liked HERE.  I can use my shells with sandbucket counting mats or white pom poms with snowman grid counting mats. I know the kiddos will love them!

 Red and green checkers from the dollar store had 32 in each bag. Great chunky counters for little fingers. I laminated the checkerboard so maybe that will work for a counting mat?

I found a cute “space” mat for these glow in the dark shapes HERE at coloring hub.  I printed the coloring page on gray cardstock and laminated them. It is a cute mat. 

These glow in the dark stars were a dollar store item too. I thought maybe just some black foam might work as the “night sky” counting mat? Here was lots of space coloring pages. I found one that had a planet, and a rocket that might work.

Now I just need to get some little containers for all my counting mat junk!! Anybody have any suggestions here? Maybe just some Rubbermaid tubs?

Frozen Finger Puppets from Felt

I have 5 granddaughters who all LOVE FROZEN, the movie. So when I saw some patterns for some cute, little, finger puppets of all of the characters, I knew we had to make them! I went out and bought about $7.00 worth of felt squares of every color. I looked at this picture I saw on Facebook From The Idea Room and then I freehanded the puppets. It was pretty easy to also embellish with glitter, sequins, buttons and gems. And we made little faces out of fine, Sharpie markers.

All the Frozen Characters; Anna, Elsa, Olaf, Hans, Kristoff and Sven.
Sven the Moose? Oops. I guess he’s a reindeer. My bad. 
We kept laughing at ourselves for putting what we called a “spork” on her head with felt. haha. Then we added glitter and a little earring and glittery button to her outfit. And Tiff got out her makeup and dabbed on some real blush. 
Elsa and Anna Finger Dolls from Frozen were the most fun to make of all the characters. We added eyelashes to the wiggly eyes. 
Olaf was super funny. Wendy came up with the design and made all the Olaf puppets for the girls. I crafted Hans and Kristoff adding a few little sequins for buttons. Tiff did all the hair and cut out just about all those clothes. Then we had an assembly line going with the glue gun. The girls picked out the buttons and beads and embellishments they wanted. 
I know we’ll be playing with these for a long time. I think Dylan just tolerated all the “dolls”. He would have rather had some Hot Wheels cars instead I think. lol. Tiff was nice enough to let us all come over and mess up her pretty house making crafts. Thanks Tiff. 
Frozen Finger Puppets made from Felt. Super Easy and so fun. I found these little Frozen tiny lunch box tins for the girls to keep the dolls in. They were at the Target Dollar section. I should have bought more of them. I found these cute playing cards there too. Only a buck! 
Frozen little Lunchpail tin mini with Frozen playing cards. We’ll keep the dolls in the tins. I scored these at the Target Dollar section. The tin was $3 and the cards were $1. 
Frozen Fingerpuppet patterns. 
Our Frozen Felt Finger Puppet patterns. I’ll make these into a PDF today after school. 
Here we all are after our FROZEN Finger puppets were all made! That was a fun crafting afternoon with almost all my granddaughters there.  

 Then one of the girls got out her mini boombox and they all started singing “Let It Go” together. It was pretty much like every other one you’ve seen on youtube. Funny only to us, probably. Lots of  pretty, off key singing while we were all laughing.

My granddaughters were two of millions who donned the Elsa and Anna costumes this Halloween. At my school there were dozens of them in every classroom! It was the MOST popular costume I’d seen in years! 
Frozen Trunk or Treating! Aren’t they just super cute? 

Family Shopping.com had some cute Frozen banners I liked with Olaf in the middle, great for a FROZEN kiddie party! It would be fun to have one in the dead of Utah Winter wouldn’t it? Maybe some little, powdered donut snowmen and hot chocolate in ice blue mugs with marshmallows?

For future crafts we will be making beaded bracelets in the Frozen colors of light and dark blue and pinkish purple and white. I got these cute charms to put in between the beads from Oriental Trading. The multicolor snowflake charms come in a package of 36 for $7.00. I think these will be awesome and sweet!

Fall and Scarecrow Art and Writing Activities


SCARECROW ART PROJECT FOR KINDERGARTEN KIDDOS.
Scarecrow and Fall Writing for kids. 
Scarecrow Art Project for kids. 

Last Friday the theme was scarecrows. I have a couple of very cute scarecrow stories we started out reading.

I got this book The Lonely Scarecrow last month on Amazon for a great price! It is a darling story. 

 An overview of why we have scarecrows and what they were used for over 2000 years ago is HERE from abc teach. We did a cute Scarecrow Art Project on Friday after learning why farmers needed scarecrows to scare off crows that ate the crops in their fields.

The Little Scarecrow Boy book. 

HERE at Notebooking Nook  I got lots of cute writing stationary pages for kindergarteners to practice writing words about FALL. A Burst ofsFirst also had some cute writing papers. And I used this cute Scarecrow Math Roll and Color for math as a fast finisher today. But at Just Wild About Teaching she had 3 really cute writing papers I chose to use for my class bulletin board for November. I always put writing with my art projects on the board.

Fall Writing “I Like Fall Because…” We brainstormed about 12 ideas on the board to scaffold kids’ writing in kindergarten. 
I loved the smiles on these creative Construction Paper Scarecrows.

I also found a cute Scarecrow Bookmark HERE at First Grade Schoolhouse. Bookmarks are a good motivational tool to get kids to do their best and finish their work in a timely manner. A few more FALL ideas I thought were cute and only a dollar are HERE at TPT. I especially loved the Fall writing paper.

Scarecrow art for kids. 
Kids wrote about things they liked about Fall…..

This was another good idea for a prewriting page. I loved the graphics of this one and for kinder it may be enough writing in itself. I like the 4 ways to describe fall. HERE at Educating Everyone for Life is the cute stationary.

Scarecrow Art for Kindergarten 
Fall Writing Topic; I Like Fall because….

SOME SONGS TO SING TO GO ALONG WITH SCARECROWS

(“Twinkle,Twinkle, Little Star” tune)

Scarecrow, scarecrow turn around.
Scarecrow, scarecrow touch the ground.
Stand up tall and blink your eyes.
Raise your hands up to the sky.
Clap your hands, then tap your knees.
Turn around and tap your feet.

Scarecrow, scarecrow touch your toes.
Scarecrow, scarecrow tap your nose.
Swing your arms so very slow,
Now real fast to scare the crows!
Touch your head, hop up and down.
Now sit down without a sound.


Scarecrow (Tune: I’m a Little Teapot) I wrote this little ditty! Another Song to this tune is at I Cool Pages.com
I’m a little scarecrow short and fat
Stuffed together with a big straw hat!
When the crows come ’round 
to gobble my corn
I shake and I shout
In the Early Morn!

So Clap and Stomp
and snap and HOP
till (clap) those scarecrows (stomp)  all fly(snap)  OFF! (hop) fly off! 

Fun Scarecrow Art. We should have added a black crow on the scarecrow shoulder lol. 


5 Crows All Shiny Black (Tune: 5 Little Speckled Frogs)

5 Crows all shiny black
Sat on a scarecrow’s back
Eating the most delicious corn (caw, caw)
Scarecrow winked and shouted “BOO!”
Scared those crows and away they flew!
Now there are 4 black shiny crows (caw caw)

repeat with 3, then 2, then 1, then none.

To go along with this song, I found some very cute scarecrow and black Crow activities that were great for my class at Teaching Heart.net. Scroll down to the “Crow Arts and Games” and there is the above poem/song with a little cut and paste with crows. Check out these songs at HERE. They are cute and free!

I have to add our scarecrow writing to our Scarecrow Bulletin Board. 

The BEST part was, I used the 5 crows as a math manipulative after the kids cut them out. We sang “5 crows..now there are 4 etc. and after subtracting 1 crow each time the kids started to get what subtraction is all about. I kept referring to my math pocket chart which has addition, subtraction and take away and total and equal as vocab words for math (so far). You could also use dried black beans as counters for the “black crows”. They are very cheap at the market.

We added white circle stickers and wiggly eyes and eyelashes. The shirts would have been cuter using plaid scrapbook paper but I didn’t have any.  We also added a pipe cleaner bow and stapled it on for a 3D effect. 

Check out this activity at teaching heart.net link above.
It was a great activity. Then we glued the 5 crows onto the book top in the 5 spots. Super cute! Then they colored the scarecrow. I had the kids add 5-1=4  and 4-1=3 on each of the squares with their pencils. It was cute enough to put up on our math bulletin board. Loved it. Loved the song. Thanks Teaching Heart!

Well I had to include these cute little Scarecrow Cupcakes I made. They hats are orange slices (come in multiflavored packages now) and the hair is from chinese noodles (the crunchy kind). The noses are candy corn of course and M & M or chocolate chip eyes. Happy Fall Y’all! 
Check out loads of fun ideas for a fun Family Thanksgiving on my other blog Patties Place. We always have lots of activities planned for the grandkiddos that you might also like! 

Hello Kitty Math Center from Target Dollar Deals

Wow! What a fun TARGET find! I love that dollar area at Target!  I scored a……
HELLO KITTY MATH CENTER! 

I LOVED these self-checking cat flashcards that were FREE! Check them out HERE at Printable Kindergarten.  They will be perfect for my Hello Kitty Math Center below. 


I got some CUTE little Hello Kitty Cat writing boards and some pink and black Halloween CAT erasers for $1.00 each at the Target $1.00 aisle. Aren’t they cute? This printable with the self-checking cat flashcards will be perfect for this to use as a math center! 

Target Hello Kitty Math Center I found in the Dollar section.

 I have these 3 Hello Kitty math things at the math center. The marker also has this cute  whiteboard and it has its own eraser!! Woot! I got each of these Hello Kitty things for a buck! And the cute erasers are black cats with pink so even though they are just Halloween cats they match the Hello Kitty stuff…..kind of…..:D
The pad of cute pad of paper is just for me. lol.

Target is my new Favorite Place for finding math counters. These erasers are so COOL! 

 I got these cool little buckets 2 for $1.00 too. They work great to fill with the cats and to clean up the center and put everything inside. I found lots of witch and skeleton and black cat activities online too. Check out a Witch math facts coloring page, HERE at the Home Teacher. 

 This makes a really great math center for this week. Thanks Target! And I know the kids will LOVE the innovation on the “Happy and You Know It” song. 
How many of your students know the song “If You’re Happy and You Know It?” Here is a cute play on words using Halloween words instead. Super CUTE!
If you’re a black cat and you know it say Me-ow (sing twice
If’ you’re a black cat and you know it and you really want to show it, 
If you’re a black cat and you know it say meow! 

If you’re a skeleton and you know it wiggle your bones (shake body)
If you’re a monster and you know it say “I’ll Get Ya!” 
If you’re a witch and you know it say “hee hee”! 
If you’re a ghost and you know it just say BOO. (sing twice)
Kids LOVE singing this song! 
Happy Fall Ya’ll! 

Cute Halloween Songs and Math Centers

I had fun at our church Halloween Party and Trunk or Treat Friday night. It was fun to play bean bag toss through the Jack-o-Lantern with my grandkiddos and watch them do a costume parade.

We are all Cowboyed UP! (Jessie from Toy Story…..that’s me!)

I’m Jessie from Toy Story. I just forgot my cow chaps! Woops!

Cute footprint ghost I saw on Pinterest! 

How many of your students know the song “If You’re Happy and You Know It?” Here is a cute play on words using Halloween words instead. Super CUTE!

If you’re a ghost and you know it just say BOO. (sing twice)
If you’re a ghost and you know it and you really want to show it
If you’re a ghost and you know it just say BOO.

Fun and Easy Ba.t Art project form handprints

HERE is a cute Ghost handwriting sheet to use after this verse of the song.  I usually highlight with green tape the sight words like and and you. HERE at Teacher Mama  is a cute Ghost Math worksheet teaching number sentences. My kids are doing great at it already! 

If you’re a black cat and you know it say Me-ow
If you’re a skeleton and you know it wiggle your bones (shake body)
If you’re a monster and you know it say ROAR!
If you’re a witch and you know it say hee hee hee

Kids would LOVE this! 

We did these skeletons one year in partners. It was HARD! 

 I found lots of witch and skeleton and black cat activities too. Check out a Witch math facts coloring page, HERE at the Home Teacher.  And I LOVED these self-checking cat flashcards that were FREE too! Check them out HERE at Printable Kindergarten.  

 I got some CUTE little Hello Kitty Cat writing boards and some pink and black Halloween CAT erasers for $1.00 each at the Target $1.00 aisle. Aren’t they cute? This printable with the self-checking cat flashcards will be perfect for this to use as a math center! 

 I have these 3 Hello Kitty math things at the math center. The marker also has this cute  whiteboard and it has its own eraser!! Woot! I got each of these Hello Kitty things for a buck! And the cute erasers are black cats with pink so even though they are just Halloween cats they match the Hello Kitty stuff…..kind of…..:D
The pad of cute pad of paper is just for me. lol.

 I got these cool little buckets 2 for $1.00 too. They work great to fill with the cats and to clean up the center and put everything inside.

 This makes a really great math center for this week. Thanks Target! And I know the kids will LOVE the innovation on the “Happy and You Know It” song. Happy Fall Ya’ll!