Summer Made Simple: Intro

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Creative Preschool Resources

My kids just started summer break this past Friday. I quickly cut out and taped up this fun sign on the garage to welcome them home. They loved it!

Starting summer is exciting enough but announcing it to the neighborhood is even MORE FUN! Ice cream after school with the neighbors added to the excitement.

This is a summer of change for our family. Let me explain that in summers passed either my husband or I had a second job and a little extra income. In addition we were even luckier that last summer my husband worked part time for Delta Airlines. Not only did we have a little more moola, we also had flight benefits. We went to the Wisconsin Dells in January, Steamboat Springs, CO AND Orlando Florida in March and over the summer we went to Hawaii, Jamaica and California. Spoiled? Most assuredly!

This year, no money, no flight benefits. The kids keep asking when we’re going on a trip. It’s hard for them to understand that this summer we aren’t traveling. Yes, we’ll be doing a camping trip or two, our daughter will go to Girl Scout camp and church camp and our Son Lego camp, but we aren’t traveling (as they know it).

This year I’m committed to having a summer made simple (and cheap AND FUN). Since we’re both teachers, we will be having a short (45 minute) form of school each day to keep the basics fresh and we’ll spend time exploring local activities. The cheaper the better.

The Summer Made Simple series of posts is my attempt to share what we’re doing over here to inspire you anywhere to enjoy summer with your kiddos. Get out and explore or stay in and get creative with your kiddos.

Happy Summer to you!

Outer Space Activity Round-Up

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Creative Preschool Resources

We had so much fun during our outer space unit. I can’t wait to share a couple projects with you that we did, but also some more great ideas that I found out in blog land.

To begin the week we made personalized rockets for the kids to decorate however they like and attached them to “space paper”. We’ve also used the exact same rockets and simply stapled the two sides together to make an unattached rocket.

It’s the end of the year for our Pre-K students and they are getting ready for their Kindergarten career. We used two dice to complete rocket addition problems.

From Busy Bee Kids Crafts.com I found a cute Paper Planetarium project. So simple, yet adorable for preschool students.

From DLTK-kids.com I found a great toilet paper astronaut craft. The kids loved it!

Mrs. Karen offers a whole collection of space preschool ideas that are fabulous! I particularly love these space paintings.

Thanks for joining us for some fun Outer Space activities.

Canvas Wall Name Art

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Creative Preschool Resources

Happy Friday, happy, happy Friday! {Can you hear the tune? I can as I type} Anyways, do you remember the canvas wall I’m working on and the cute “Teague Family” signs? I promised a tutorial and here it is. :-) Can I just say that I love my growing canvas wall. I can’t wait to have this thing full of pics. It will be a show stopper.

I purchased these wonderful burned edge words from Pick Your Plum. Yeah, I’m a PYP junkie, sorry! They looked great, but the letters all run together making it a little big difficult to read. The letter “m” and letter “l” and letter “i” just look like one weird blob. It had to be fixed.

I chose to paint them, so if they ended up looking terrible I could just repaint instead of ruining them. I started by chosing a base color. I’m really enjoying teal right now, so why not? I also really love creating my own colors and personally I think I’m pretty good at color mixing to get exactly the shade I’m looking for. I used a turquoise, added a little green and a little black. Oh yeah, please don’t mind my ugly paint mat. I’m too cheap to buy a pretty one each time I paint just for blog pics. :-) Ha!I painted each word with several coats of the paint and let them dry. Then I had to decide which letter I wanted on “top” {notice the way the “y” is in front of the “l” and the “a” is in front of the “f”.} I used a black paint marker to make the front letter stand out.

After that I used a dry brush technique {put a tiny bit of paint onto a dry brush and on scrap paper wipe MOST of it off. Then “dry brush” whatever you want} to paint all of the edges and the distress the dark black lines I made with the paint pen.

I just love the way it turned out! It looks especially great in the hallway with the pictures.

Happy crafting everyone and happy Friday!!! My baby boy graduated Kindergarten yesterday and both kiddos have their last day of school today. Wahoo for summer!

Winner Winner!

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Creative Preschool Resources

Hi all! I am so excited to announce the winner of my necklace and silver case giveaway. Drum roll please…

The winner is Kelly T. who left a comment saying, “i recently found your site on pinterest and im hooked! i love all your preschool ideas. i do a homeschool prek with my boys 3-4 days a week all year long, so i love getting a different perspective and ideas for other moms! thanks!”

Kelly has been contacted by e-mail. I can’t wait to hear about her cute necklaces! Congratulations Kelly!

Preschool Scrapping

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Creative Preschool Resources

If you’ve wondered why I’ve been so busy lately besides all of the day to day things with my own kids, I’ve also been scrapping! Yes, I’m that weird teacher that creates a scrapbook of pictures and work for all 24 students. {When I taught first grade I helped them make their own}

My partner teacher and I spent hours just trimming corners and adding a background paper to each and every picture. The picture above and below shows only a small portion of the pictures that we worked on.

I warn you now that this post has TONS of pictures. I’m going to show you each page of one of the books. I love this project. It provides the parents with ONE book to keep for the year. It has pictures and work by their child throughout the school year. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Are you tired yet? Ha! This is just October. Lots more to come, so pace yourself if needed.

I am already making a plan for how I want to do it differently next year. I want it to be a little easier for me, but still super cute for the parents. I’ll keep you posted on that as I work on it this summer. This last pic is the 2 piles of 12 books each.

Have a fantastic day! So, who is going to make these for their preschool? Do you give out or get a book like this from your preschool? There are so many creative teachers out there. What other great ideas do you have?

Let’s Get Buggy Pack

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Creative Preschool Resources

Who needs a few simple printables for this summer? Why not do a mini unit on bugs with your preschoolers? This pack can be a great starting point for some Buggy Fun!

While you are here, check out my giveaway that ends today!

Soon, I’ll post some hands-on, fun ideas that you can do with your kiddos to bring your bug unit to life!

*Please note: All free printables are only for readers of Creative Preschool Resources . If you enjoy this printable, please take a second to “follow” us to receive email updates or follow via Facebook {top sidebar}. Thank you!

Download the FREE PRESCHOOL BUG PACK here. {They are all in PDF format}

What’s Included on the 10 pages:

Letter B Search
Letter B Writing Practice
Shadow Matching
Number Writing
Pattern Practice
Shape Tracing
Cutting Curved Lines
Cutting Straight Lines
Bug Puzzle
Sorting Bugs by Size

A special thanks to the wonderful artists at mygrafico.com

Check out their link on the side bar. Hope you enjoy this fun pack of printables!

If you’d like to purchase the Full 26 Page Preschool “Let’s Get Buggy Pack” from my SHOP you can ALSO get:

Number Bug Match-Up 1-6
Three versions of a simple decodable book “I See Bugs” {focus on sight words: I, see, color words} with options to write/trace the sentence
Bug Sorting Cards to print on card stock : sort by size, sort by color
Bug Sequence by Size Activity
Make Your Own Finger Print bug counting/decodable book {focus on sight words: here, is, are, number words} - Use colored fingerprints to add the correct number of bugs, then draw on legs, heads or spots.
Letter Bb Sorting Activity

Visit my SHOP today to see other great printable packs.

Linked up at: Mommy by Day Crafter by Night, Skip to my Lou, Reasons to Skip the Housework, Confessions of a Stay at Home Mommy, Lil Luna

Garden Help

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Creative Preschool Resources

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Whitney Farms for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

I LOVE plants, flowers and home-grown fruits and vegetables. The problem is that I don’t have a green thumb. I’m not absolutely terrible at gardening, but it doesn’t come naturally to me. Here are a few pictures of all I have growing in my backyard, pitiful, I know…

I am excited about a new line of products by Whitney Farms®. They offer organic plant food and soil additivies to help people like me grow a beautiful flower garden and organic veggies to feed my family.

Want to know what makes their product unique? They offer organic soil without that yucky manure smell and almost no dust. The last thing I want to smell like after working in the garden is manure. Yuck!

Last year my hubby and I were working in the yard and had to move some soil around. We decided to put it on the side of the house in the spot where I WANTED to plant an organic vegetable garden. Well, let me just say that the soil is still there a year later, with no wonderful veggies growing in it.

Doesn’t it look just lovely? Ha! Hopefully with help from Whitney Farms® I’ll be able to get the organic vegetable garden I’ve been dreaming about. I would love to know that the food I’m giving my family is 100% organic as opposed to some other vegetable plant food on the market.

Who wants to join me and give it a try? Maybe we could get our organic vegetables together and have a crispy, fresh salad playdate. Check out the great $3.00 off coupon being offered by clicking on the “Visit Sponsors Site” below. Happy gardening and happy crafting!

Family Photo Canvas Wall

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Creative Preschool Resources

Ding….. Dong! …. {Picture me dashing to the door} That’s my favorite sound when I know a package has been shipped and should arrive soon. Look what arrived on my porch last week…

Yup, it’s a 16×20 canvas print. Oh how I love me some canvas!

{ On a side note: See that ice chest? We live somewhere that fresh milk gets delivered by the milkman once a week. Lucky, I know.}

This is what’s inside… A cheesy picture of my kids from 2009. Yes, even the location of the photo and year are printed at the bottom.

Why do I want an old picture you ask. Well, I started a family canvas wall. Let’s be honest, it’s really all about my sweet kiddos. My goal is to have a CANDID canvas print of each kid for each year of their life. And yes, I’m hoping it fills the entire hallway.

This is what it looked like the morning the package arrived. Canvas prints are expensive so this is a work in progress.

Now I’ve added a great “Teague Family” sign and MY NEW canvas. The hallway does not have good lighting, so I did my best.

I just love the texture that the canvas prints add to the wall since they are different depths.

I have 4 more canvas prints on order and I can’t wait to show you what it looks like then. I want to purposely add pictures of my Grandparents so my kids never forget their heritage.

Canvas on Demand did not sponsor this post, but I would highly recommend them. The on-line upload was super easy and it arrived at my door quickly and well packaged. Check them out on my side bar.

Later this week I’ll post about my Teague Family signs. Have a great Monday!

Sunday Snapshots

Posted on May 20, 2012 by Creative Preschool Resources

Whew! What an amazing couple weeks we’ve had. We’ve been super busy with birthday parties, baseball games and TONS of end of the school year projects and activities.

My baby girl turned 8 last weekend. We celebrated at a local skating rink with several cute little ladies. It was a great time, bruised knees and all.

My Big Guy had his first baseball game. This year he plays machine pitch. Wow. Who knew a six year old could hit a ball flying at him 34 miles an hour? He did great. Proud Mama over here!