Easy Easter Basket Art

Happy Easter everyone!!  I hope you had as nice a weekend as I did!  I have to share how I came up with my Easter basket idea this year.  I am kind of obsessed with this amazing website called Catholic Icing.  It has SO many great ideas for my 2's that are going to receive their First Communion soon!  So I found this CUTE representation based on Leonardo Davinci's painting of the Last Supper.

Click on the picture above for more instructions on the blog itself!  Thank goodness we got our buddies to help us make them as they were so fun but quite the undertaking!

Anyhow, at the end of it all I had all these lids from the egg cartons we used.  Initially they all got thrown into the recycle bin.  Then, as I was circulating - you like that lovely teacher word? - I do - it sounds so formal and teachery...anyways so as I was circulating I had an idea!  I would use them to help make our Easter baskets this year!

What you will need:

egg cartons - lids will do but both sides will work

hole punch

stapler or white glue

pipe cleaners

paint brushes

water/glue containers

placemats to cut down on the mess

Easter grass

First, have students cut the lid in half.  Next, have students slide the carton together to make whatever size basket they wish.  They may have to cut out some of the carton so that it will fit nicely together like a piece of lego or a jigsaw puzzle.  Then, have your students glue, or staple to save time, their carton together.  Hole punch each side and add pipe cleaner for the handle - choose a different colour for each side, attach them and then twist them together in the middle.  Use colourful tissue paper and a mixture of water and white glue to modge podge the outside - I told my students to just decorate the sides rather than the bottom to save time.  Let them dry overnight.  Finally, add Easter grass and they are ready to go!!

If you have already done your Easter baskets you can always pin it for next year:)  Happy Easter all!!

Math Game Freebie Alert: 1000 - count by 50's, 100's, and 25's

Have you ever played 10,000 before?  If you haven't this game is inspired by 10,000.  It was funny because my intention was to teach my class this game but then I realized that the full version was a tad too difficult for adding reasons and number of rules.  The game quickly became modified into 1000 and my muffins LOVED them some 1000 playing!

Graphics and fonts by Ashley Hughes, First Grade Brain, and Cara Taylor 

CLICK above for the freebie instructions!!  What I really love is that my kiddos are practicing counting by 25 - this will help with money immensely!  They also learn to add big numbers together - booyah!

Here is a picture of the plate the kids use to roll their dice on to cut down on the noise.  My wonderful mentors Carla and Joan gave me this idea.  Just hot glue gun some felt into a paper play and bye-bye noisy dice sounds!!!

As you can see they are a little worse for wear due to many year of use!!

I was on my TpT store and looking at the comments some of you left!  They are so nice to read.  A lot of you mentioned how you liked the Canadian content!!  Well here is some more Canadian content for all of you peeps out there!  Click on the picture below to see it on TpT!

Here is just a taste of one of the activities that we did this year.  This is based on Michael Mitchell's amazing song "Canada in My Pocket" - so adorable.  Not quite sure how to handle the loss of the penny though.  Anyone else out there in the same conundrum?

Here is the video - it is so cute and catchy - we sang it a lot!

Spring Has Sprung! Easy Art Spring Edition AND Organization Station!

Spring has sprung, the grass has riz - I wonder where the flowers is?  Actually, they are right here in another easy art blog post!!  As you can see we have been learning about flowers and seeds.  Out popped this super easy, yet aesthetically pleasing project!

You will need:

faux flower petals from the Dollar Store

yellow construction paper

various types of seeds

white glue

oil pastels

Love the creativity here!!

First, have students put a circle of glue (great time to review this 2D shape) for the flower head.  Have students glue petals all around the circle.  If needed they can add a second layer.

Next, students can glue seeds to make the centre of their flower.  I encouraged them to make a pattern.

Finally, I showed them a shading technique with the oil pastel to make the leaves and stem.  I had the students draw the leaves and stem, then shade one side darker.  After, I had them smudge the pastel with their finger towards the other side to create a cool 3D effect!

I was super impressed with how they turned out!!

The reminds me of something a little Hawaiian princess would wear!

My muffins are so creative!

Voila!  Easy Spring ART!  Huzzah!

Now onto the Language Arts part of the post.  We have been learning about the writing trait of organization.  It is kind of a hard trait to teach!!!  What is organization in writing really?  Sometimes it comes easily but other times it does not!!  I thought we should study some examples more carefully so I came up with - dun, duduh!!  Organization Station!  

In the following activity students must read the story, cut it apart and organize it from title and author to end.  Students will then glue it on the provided sheet below.  

My kiddos had fun reading, cutting and glueing.  They had to read the stories carefully to ensure they did not mix up the order.  Yes - close reading!!!

It was so cute - today I ran into a teacher friend in Zumba class.  She came up to me and asked if I had a teacher blog.  When I replied that I did she said that she had seen my blog and was so excited that she knew me!!!  Eeeek!!  It was so cool!!  She is teaching Grade 1 this year for the first time and is loving TpT!  Anyhow, hope all is well in your little classroom!  Happy Spring!!