Monthly School Idea: Football

I made this tag awhile ago, but it appears that I forgot to post it.  At this time I can't find pictures so maybe I didn't take any.  I think I didn't post it because I was thinking about making more tags with more sayings, but I better get these out now.  Here is what the tag looks like:

I just trimmed these up (you could layer it with some gold or dark green paper), punched some holes in the ends, threaded ribbon through, and then tied it around the football.  I purchased Nerf footballs.  The second graders use it all the time, but the fifth graders prefer the "real" kind.

DOWNLOAD FOOTBALL TAG HERE.
Do me a favor, if you decide to download my creations, please take the time to leave a comment.  Even if the comment simply says Thanks or downloaded.  Knowing people use it makes taking the time to take pictures and create posts worth it!  Thanks for visiting.

Why I've Been Gone

Spring break was the perfect time to get caught up on the blog, right.  Nope.  This year was a busy time.  My family (most of whom I hadn't seen for 3 years including 2 nephews I hadn't met) came out for my Boo's baptism.  Before Spring Break I had been busy getting ready for the baptism, watching General Conference and getting ready for visitors (I think a birthday was in there too).  After spring break I've been trying to get caught up on everything that I missed and start planting a garden.  Here are some of my distractions:
Baptism Pictures in between sessions on Sunday:

 Dyeing Eggs with the Cousins on Friday:

Baptism on Saturday (longer post coming with printables):

Followed by time at the park:

Then it was Easter:

The next day we went to the Zoo:

We also had a picnic lunch, swimming, touring a civil war house, an attempt at cousin pictures, a day of shopping & lunch, and much more.  It was a fun week and I miss my family again, but it was so good to see them and play with the nephews.  We did miss one nephew and the brother-in-laws, but it was great fun!  Well worth the busy week.  More posts to come (shortly I hope, but baseball season has started - we had three game this week and it eats up about 3 1/2 hours each game - so worth it though).

I Will Catch Up (One Day)

I feel so far behind.  I have been getting ready for the baptism of my youngest and for family to come visit out of state.  I have so much to post about that even plus a whole lot more - St. Patrick's Day, Spirit Week, more scout stuff, Nursery stuff, stuff tried from Pinterest.  It may not get all posted until summer, but I'll work on it, PROMISE.

Look I was Featured!

Conference Weekend I glanced at my stats.  I was surprised to see a new referring site (that had sent over 500 hits in one day).  Wasn't I surprised to see that my little site was featured in a Deseret News article: Preparing for LDS General Conference.  It was in the Bloggernacle section online.  It so made my day!  Thanks for the feature.  You can check out the article here: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865552904/Bloggernacle-Back-Bench-Preparing-for-LDS-General-Conference.html?pg=2

General Conference Bags for my Nursery Kids

When I was released from Cub Scouts and as a primary teacher I was called as the Nursery leader.  One day I'll post what I have started in there, but several months later I still feel like there is so much to do/learn!  My first nursery post is going to be about the kits I made them for General Conference this coming weekend.

Last year I found an idea in which you stick a picture of the prophet or apostles on a bag and when that person was speaking in General Conference the kids were able to do/eat whatever is in that bag.  I found it right before conference and threw it together (not completely) for my kids.  This year I hope to make it a little more complete.  I decided to do something similar for my nursery kids (right now we only average 4-6 kids, but that will change shortly)! 
I found this awesome site that had all the pictures I needed sized to print on labels.  The only downside is that I didn't have labels and of course I remembered Saturday night that if I was going to give out something for Conference it would have to be the following day so I just printed them onto regular paper, cut them out, and used packaging tape to tape them onto baggies (both snack size and sandwich size).  Inside the baggies I put pictures to color (I used some from here, but I later I think printing some from the nursery manual would have probably been better for this age.  My internet was BARELY working so I wasn't able to search around for other pages), treats, or activities.  The activity bags included: a bag with dental floss & cheerios so they could make a necklace (I tied one cheerio onto the end so it was ready to go),  a matching game - I printed two copies of this Bingo game made for toddlers.  I cut out the pictures using the lines as guides & put them into a bag to be used as a matching game (there were nine pictures per game so they didn't have all the apostles), home-made play dough I had leftover from these Valentine's cards, and bubbles (I put this in President Monson's so the parents could choose to blow it a few times every time he spoke or just give it to them the first time he spoke).  I also had snacks: Capri sun, teddy grahams, Nilla Wafers, pretzels, skittles.

I put it all in a gallon size Ziploc bag and included a note so the parents knew what it was all about.  I introduced it to the kids and told them they had to wait until conference before they could open it.  Hopefully it'll make conference a little more exciting for those small, but oh so bright spirits! 

Sorry for the pictures.  The one of the items in the bag was taken with my phone.  The others are in a kit that isn't complete, but it will show you what I did.  We are missing large heart marshmallows, another coloring page, and a bag of teddy grahams.  Hopefully the activities and food will be spread out!

Sneak peak at the St Patricks Day Treat

Here is a sneak peak at what we will be giving for St Patrick's Day. And it was NOT pinterest inspired!

Tutorial to follow, but all you need are Glad containers, green spray paint, black ribbon, yellow or gold paper, and something fun to put inside.

To see the post go here. 

A Birthday Cake for a Teacher {Supply Cake}

One of the first things I saw when I joined Pinterest was this supply cake. I KNEW that is what I needed to make for the birthday's of my kids' teachers this year. As you can tell from this blog I'm a big advocate of giving teachers a little something. Unless you are in the schools (volunteering/substitute teaching, etc) you have no idea how much these teachers do!
Since I work at the elementary school, every month I look at the whiteboard calendar to see if it contains any birthday's I need to know about.  So the beginning of March I look at the calendar and see that Boo's Teacher's birthday is the NEXT day!  I still want to do make her a supply cake, but I have no time to go to the store.  So I do the next best thing.  I go through my stash of school/office supplies to create this:

If I had more time/supplies I would've liked to do a few different things to it, but considering I didn't purchase anything I think it turned out nicely.
I didn't take step by step instructions, but here is what I did.  First I took a roll of paper towels as the center to hold everything.  If I had it on hand I would have used a large (Coscto size) container of Lysol wipes.  Teachers definitely could use those more than paper towels.  Anyway, take a roll of paper towels (or container of wipes) and wrap around some spiral notebooks (or folders with or without brads - or even composition notebooks, but these are short for paper towel center) and stick a large file elastic around the entire thing to hold it together.  It will probably require extra hands because those notebooks don't like to stay curled around.  Don't worry too much about how spread out they are, you can move them around after the elastic is on.

I almost forgot.  You will need a base.  It ends up being pretty heavy so make sure it is sturdy.  You could you cardboard or a cake base, but I stuck with the supply theme and used a clipboard (I just set the cake on it, I didn't adhere it):

 

Now it is time to put supplies onto the cake.  I really like the boxes of crayons along the bottom to make the bottom layer wider, but I didn't have enough.  So going through my supplies I came up with this:

The bottom layer of the cake is glue.  It rotates between liquid glue and glue sticks.  As you can see I had two different kinds of school glue on here.  I wanted a middle layer, but it couldn't be too thick and so I came up with post-its.  One can never have too many post-its! Put as many on as you can and put another elastic around it.  You can add more after the elastic is on.
For the top I put a smaller elastic around three boxes of crayons.  Then put mores supplies around them.  First I added pencils to two sides opposite each other.  To the other two sides there are pens (They lay flat against the crayons when my hand isn't moving them).

I thought it was a little plain so we added more supplies around the pens and pencils. On one side are some stamps:

On the opposite side are some dry erase markers:

The other two sides have a pencil sharpener, an eraser, and a bottle of white-out.  On top/in the center is a container of clips:

After all your supplies are attached via elastic (and if you have pieces such as the crayon topper attach with adhesive - I used a tape runner). It is time to add ribbon to cover up all those elastics you see:

I went through the ribbon stash and found some cupcake ribbon and alphabet ribbon.  I found some coordinating 1 1/2 inch ribbon.  I didn't have much left of the pink & yellow cupcakes, but there was a few elastics to cover up (since I added so many layers).  I used the yellow ribbon over the elastics and had just enough cupcake ribbon to put around one of the ribbons:

The middle layer has the alphabet ribbon:

and then another layer of birthday ribbon:

Here is the full cake with the ribbon:

I decided it need a little something else to spruce it up and hide the seams in the ribbon.  I went through the flower stash to see what I had in coordinating colors.  I came up with this:

I think Boo's teacher was impressed with her cake.  Hopefully she will enjoy it and won't have to purchase many supplies out of her own pocket.  Happy Birthday Ms. Millson!

Linking to:

Bloom Design