Halloween totes

I had every intention of making LeAnne's tote that Maren made, but the night before Halloween I found that I hadn't started or gathered materials, and I was babysitting for a friend all night. About 10 min. before I headed out the door, I grabbed a few fatquarters I thought might work, some batting, and my sewing machine. I thought I'd have internet access while there, but their computer was turned off. So, instead of making LeAnne's, I decided to make/modify a little basket I made a couple years ago that I kind of remembered. I had a piece of the brown pleather stuff I used last time for the bottom already cut the right size, so I made the two other pieces the same size as the bottom and cut the batting and lining to fit it once the three outer pieces were sewn together.

I'll tell you what I modified on her pattern: all 3 outer pieces were 6 in. X 9.5 in. and the batting and lining were modified to fit that once they were sewn together. The sewing process is essentially the same basket as pink penguin's scrap basket but with slightly taller and solid sides (so you don't have to worry about the patchwork steps), so please, check her basket and tutorial out!

Each basket took me less than an hour I think...

 Here it is in action. Absolutely the perfect size for a 3 year old trick-or- treater. I think the size would also work very nicely as a scripture tote for a mini quad.

Tool belt

Dean wanted to be a builder for Halloween, and I felt like my alien "tool belt" just wasn't going to be suitable for a builder. A gardener maybe, but not a builder. So I set out to make him a new one. I found one tutorial for a belt similar to what I was going for, but it was a bit confusing, so I ended up winging most of it and added some things here and there. It turned out pretty well for not knowing what I was doing. I was happy with it.

He was eating a Halloween cookie and trying to smile big simultaneously.

This is probably the best view. A nail pouch on the left, pencil holder, tape measure holder, and then a place for the tools.

J is for "Just not good enough" I guess.

Oh boy. Did preschool today ever feel like a failure. I thought I had fun things planned, but boy it didn't work out quite like I had envisioned.  Two of the four kids were pretty resistant and kept wandering off and not wanting to participate. I think every child was put into a time out at least once. There were only a few moments of redeeming goodness of the whole 2 hours.

I opened with the Surprise Pumpkin story. It went well enough. The aforementioned resistant kids kept pounding the table, not listening, but the other two seemed to like it.

J is for Jack-o-lantern.

• I had a paper pumpkin for each child to turn into a Jock-o-lantern. I had a big bucket of shape punches I let the kids use to make different shapes for the eyes and nose and I cut crescents for the mouths. Two of the kids could figure out the punches, but two couldn't. I should have just stuck to the original shape pumpkin idea where I provided basic shapes (triangles, rectangles, crescents, and squares). All the pumpkins turned out cute, but the punches were the downfall on this one.

J is for Jump and Jog

• I had lots of J's taped to my kitchen floor that they were supposed to jump from one to the next in a circle. They didn't even all make it around once before the papers all started ripping to shreds. Guess I needed cardstock.
• I tried to play red light-green light while they jogged outside. Once again, two refused to play and just went to the playset. The other two had fun. Only problem with this is that once I let them have a turn being the lights, they'd tackle the child with the lights once they reached them. That lead to punching and a time out. Oi.

 J is for Jerry (of Tom and Jerry because I needed some time to regroup since I felt like that whole first hour was a failure) They watched a Halloween episode of Tom and Jerry and it was fun to listen to their commentary the whole time..

J is for Juice and Jam

• I had a plate of fruits and veggies to juice, and electric juicer, and a hand juicer.  3 of them liked the idea of juicing, but only Dean drank his juice (and Walter drank the undrunk juice when he woke up). The others said it was yucky. When I asked one what it tasted like, he said, "strawberries and apples". And that's yucky? Whatever.One just ate her fruits and had no desire to juice. I had cut the oranges in half so they could juice them in the hand juicer and she kept trying to eat it, biting into the rind and all.
• I made toast and put jam on it. Most of the kids liked that, but one had a fit about jam being on his toast. I think he eventually ate it.

5 Little Speckled Frogs Jump

• They stood on my coffee table for the log and jumped onto the carpet while I sang this. They couldn't grasp the notion to only have 1 child jump into the "pool" so we could count down the frogs. But whatever. They kind of liked being allowed to jump off of furniture.

J is for Jobs

• I was really excited to try and role play different types of jobs, but once again, only two of the kids wanted to (when it was time to role play, that is--when they were supposed to be doing other projects with me, they kept putting on the fire hat and hard hat and running around). Dean has a jobs book that he LOVES, but the other kids weren't interested in any of the jobs except fireman.  We pretended to be firemen, sprayed a fire and rescued a cat. We also pretended to be doctors and patients, taking temperatures and weighing each kid. This went ok. Just not what I was hoping for. Theme of the day.

At one point, one of the kids threw the fireman hat like a frisbee and it cut the nose of one of the other kids. That poor same kid walked right into the chain of someone swinging when we were outside waiting for parents. He also got conked by the trapeze bar. Poor guy. It was a tough, but we made it through it. I just hope I can redeem my teaching next month! Q & R coming the first of next month.

I is for ice cream

It's the first week of the month and I'm teaching preschool again! So, here's the gamut of my preschool today.

We first did our calendar and weather chart that I made. I am in the process of revamping this so it can double as a chalk board, so I will show you that when I'm finished.

I is for Insect and I spy:

• I had some foam sheets with the letter I on them. I let them decorate them with insect stickers and used sticky back velcro to turn them into an "I spy" telescope. 
• We looked at 1 page of an I spy book and I quickly realized they had no interest. That kind of surprised me since Dean loves I spy books.
• I had pictures of different types of insects taped on my cupboards.  We played "I spy an insect that..." I would describe an insect and they'd try and find it and swat it with a fly swatter! They liked the fly swatter, but they didn't like that I only had 1 of them and they had to share and take turns.
• We went outside and had an insect hunt and flew like insects on our playset swings.
• We came inside and read an Eric Carle book, put on glow bracelets, and went into a semi-dark room and pretended to be fireflies

Old School Sesame Street Segments

• I love Old School Sesame Street and fairly despise the Elmo run Sesame Street.  So, we watched an old Grover "i" song and a capital I segment. I thought they'd like the song more, but they really laughed at the other segment more.

I is for Instruments

• We made some shakers out of empty water bottles and corn. They were easy, cheap, and fantasticly noisy!  This was the funnest part of preschool today.
• We turned on some TMBG's 123s and ABCs and jammed out with our shakers.

I is for Igloo and Ice Cream

• I made homemade ice cream and carrot cupcakes since one of the boys had a birthday on Sunday.We "iced" the cupcakes (igloos) and put marshmallows all over them to build our igloo.  We ate the ice cream out on my little picnic table I made and it made me happy. =0)

A is for apple and acorn

I'm doing a co-op preschool with 3 other moms. I'll teach one week a month (two days that week). We don't have a curriculum, but we're going to try and focus on a letter for the day.  I started, and today was the first day, so A it was.

A is for Apple and acorn:

1. We started with a generic coloring sheet with an apple and Aa on it.
2.  I got out three real apples to compare and eat: yellow, green, and braeburn (for the red since I think red delicious are disgusting).  We talked about the colors, decided that they were cold, crunchy, and that they had seeds. I gave them each a "plan toy" wooden fruit or veggie and a butter knife to cut them apart (they have velcro in the middle) while I was cutting the real apples. They really enjoyed that and most tried to cut their real apple with the knife as well. I had them taste a slice of each one and tell me if it was sour or sweet. One of the boys kept talking about having to water apples so they can grow. 
3. After snack, we read the book Ten Red Apples.  I made a cardboard tree with numbered apples stuck to it with clothes pins to go with the book.  As the animals in the book ate an apple, one of the kids got to take an apple off our tree.  At the end I let them put them back. The clothes pins are really good for fine motor skills. It was kind of Montessori inspired. I didn't do anything with the numbers with the big group. Too crazy. But in the afternoon, Dean wanted to play with this again and we put the apples on in order from 1 to 10. He really liked the tree.
4. We sang "Apples, apple, apples" to the tune of  Peanut butter and Jelly. They all did the actions. (First you climb the ladder and you pick it, then wash it, then cut it. chorus. Then you take the apple and you bite it, chew it, and swallow it.
5. We had an apples and acorns sensory tub inspired by this fall sensory tub by No Time for Flash Cards.  I had two tubs so it would be 2 to a tub (though the 3 boys ended up playing in one with the girl having her own), and each kid had their own bowl to sort the apples and acorns into. This was a HIT. All of the kids loved it. Dean got bored of it first (though he did want to play with it again later that afternoon), but I swear the other kids could have played there another half hour or hour!  They hid the acorns under the beans, dug them out with their hands, spoons, tongs, etc.  I had one little boy hording acorns like a little squirrel.  One liked burying his hands and elbows under.  They were very cute.
6. I tried reading 10 Apples Up on Top, but Dean had a major melt down when he started putting the apples from our tree activity on his head and they wouldn't stay up there.
7. Last for the activities, we did the lowercase apple a activity from NTFFC. I would have had them play outside to change it up a bit, but it was POURING today.

Neck pillows

I LOVE EASY PROJECTS! I made one last night and two tonight.

I made the first out of quilting cotton. The second was out of flannel. The third was out of flannel and fleece. The worst by far was the cotton pillow. It's a bit scratchy and didn't have a good enough stretch to fill nicely. The other two were just fine, though I was able to pack more polyfill in the one with fleece (since it had the most stretch) making for a slightly taller pillow.

I will probably make two of these for myself. One by itself isn't enough for my large noggin and neck, but two stacked on top of each other is just about perfect! We'll see if I can get the boys to use these on our 14-16 hour (one way) trip to AZ this month! I imagine that if they're head's to the bobbing point, they won't even notice if I slip it on them...

I drew up a pattern onto parchment paper from make it and love it's description. As I drew it up, though, I actually did 1 in. smaller on the legs than she described in the comments. I'd be interested to make the pillow with her exact dimensions and compare. Not hard at all.