St. Patrick's Flowers

I am so excited for St. Patrick's Day this year.  Not that I am Irish, or even a huge fan of green, but the Irish spirit has captured me this year.  In my classroom, my Kindergarteners have been keeping their eyes open for all of the little clues that are being left behind by a tricky little leprechaun.  Somehow, the joy that they are experiencing has filled my heart with love for this holiday.  I am embarrassed to say that I never really knew the story of St. Patrick until I was reading some books to my class this year.  I am in awe of the devotion of such an incredible man.  I am also looking forward to all of the fun that we are going to have this week in my classroom. :)

That was a long introduction for a little St. Patrick's Day project that I did for myself and my daughter this week.  I made a sort-of shamrocky flower.  I put one on a clip/pin and the other on a headband.

I started with a sheet of green felt, a glue gun (of course it is one of my closest friends), a pair of scissors, a clip, a pin and a headband.  I made petal templates with a piece of paper.  The petals are a kind of rounded heart shape.  The larger one is about 1.5 inches across and the smaller one is 1.75 inches across.

Next, I glued the large petals to the outside edge of the circle, overlapping them.

Make sure to tuck the last one, under the edge of the first one.

Next, glue the smaller petals in the center of the circle, overlapping them as well.

I made two!

Although I thought they were cute just like this.  I decided to add some pearl beads that I had to the center.

I put a clip and a pin on one. (With Hot glue of course)

I put the other one on a headband.  First I glued the flower right on the headband.

Then, I glued a felt circle on the inside.

Here we are wearing our new St. Patrick's Day Accessories!

Now I can't wait until Thursday so we can wear them.  Actually, maybe we could wear them all week. :)

Another Word Family Activity

As you can see from me having a second word family activity, that I am in the midst of teaching word families.  This one is pretty simple.  I just cut two pieces of red construction paper in a trapezoid shape to look like a popcorn bucket then I glued the sides and bottom together. (Sorry I don't have a picture of each step)  I cut white strips to make the stripes on the bucket.  I used a white rectangle to label each popcorn bucket with a word family.

Finally, I cut white construction paper in a large "popcorn" shape and wrote the words in each word
family on them.

The pieces of "popcorn" slide into the open top of the bucket.  The kids pull them out one at a time and read them or read them and then put them back into the bucket.  The great part is that they are flat so they can be stored simply.

Here are the word families that I did:
-at: bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat.  -ad: bad, dad, fad, had, mad, pad, rad, sad, tad.  -ag: bag, gag, jag, lag, rag, sag, tag, wag.  -an: ban, can, dan, fan, jan, man, pan, ran, tan, van.  -en: den, hen, jen, ken, men, pan, ten.  -et: bet, get, jet, let, met, pet, set, vet, wet.

Wordy Wednesday #2

For today's Wordy Wednesday I am going to share with you a little (non-rhyming) poem that I wrote.  Last summer, we were leaving the park with our daughter and she noticed that the moon was out and that the sun was going down.  She said "Night night sun, Welcome back moon.  It was such a precious moment.  That night the sunset was such a beautiful mixture of fuchsia, orange and purple. With the combination of the precious moment with our 2 year old and the beauty of the sky I was inspired to write about it.  Here is the result.

Fuchsia Sky

by Krysti Matherly

The fuchsia sky is the sun's loving glance
back at the day.

Slipping away in the warm glow of today's memories

The fuchsia melts into mango then orchid
and finally all is indigo.

Good night Sun, until tomorrow.

As the stars begin to sparkle across the sky like diamonds, a loving friend returns.

Welcome back Moon.

Let's snuggle into the endless possibilities of a dream.

Hope you liked it!

Meandering Monday #2

Wow, I can't believe that it is Monday again. This is my work week so I have had a lot less time to meander today. But I have been looking at some things over the weekend and tonight and wanted to share some that I am loving.  Just to remind you, you can click on the name of the blog for a link to the blog's homepage or you can click on the picture for a link to that particular project.

 For starters, I just came across these adorable frames at Purple Chocolat Home:

Last week, I found these awesome poppies and lost them before I posted about them.  They are from The Wishing Elephant:

I meandered across a blog I hadn't seen before called Simply Delicious.  She had "Vamped-Up" a feather wreath that I found to be Simply Fabulous:

One of my favorite things on the planet are Cupcakes.  I found these beautiful colorful cupcakes on Sew Curly:

Over the weekend, I saw this great car activity by Fast Daze.  We have a road trip coming up in June and I am really thinking about making one of these for our beautiful daughter:

I have seen this wreath on several linky parties this weekend and I am in Love!  It is from Fancy Frugal Life:

A few weeks ago I ran across  iBake Cakes.  I think that this girl does the most amazing cakes and cupcakes.   I check there often for new and fabulous designs.  Here are some of my favs:

I hope you enjoyed meandering around blogland with me!

Thanks for stopping by.

Stylish Blogger Award

I am so excited to announce that I have been given this award:

Thank you so much Busy B Family!

You can check out her fabulous blog here:

So the Terms for Excepting The Award are:

1. Thank and Link back to the person who gave you the award.

2. Share Seven things about yourself.

3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers.

4. Contact the bloggers and tell them about the award.

Let's see, seven things about myself....

1.  I am an Adoptive Mom to the most incredible little girl to ever be born in China.

2.  I have been married to the love of my life for almost 15 years.

3. I teach Kindergarten.

4.  I LOVE Dr. Pepper, even though I try to give it up almost every Monday.

5. Cupcakes make me happy!

6.  I can't imagine my life without a creative outlet.

7.  Even though my Mom and I have completely opposite tastes, her opinion matters more to me than anyone else's.

These are the 15 bloggers that I have recently discovered and can't get enough of:


1. Handyman Crafty Woman
2. Spunky Junky
3. Stuff by Ash
4. This Little Life of Mine
5. The Girl Creative
6. This Chick Cooks
7. The Wishing Elephant
8. Roots & Wings Co.
9. Making the World Cuter
10. Living Craftily Ever After
11. Dragonfly Designs
12. Green Door Designs
13. The Idea Room
14. Love Actually
15. Funky Polka Dot Giraffe

Thank you again Busy B Family!

Dahlia

Last week I found this awesome tutorial on Holidash for making a dahlia, which is one of my favorite flowers.  Something about the shape and curves in the flower, make it so beautiful.   The tutorial on Holidash is a Mother's Day pin and is really beautiful.  So, I decided to try a version for myself.

This is my beautiful Model / Daughter, Mia!

I had to bribe Mia with a tea party to get her to model for me.  She loves hot tea.  You may notice that her dress doesn't exactly match the beautiful hair accessory I made for her.  She is currently dressed (in a Repunzel dress) for the ball that will ensue when her daddy gets home.  

There are not many supplies needed for this project.  I made paper templates in three different sizes. I was not precise with mine, but the Holidash tutorial says that they made the petals 1.5 inch, 1.25 inch and 1 inch.  You also need a sheet of felt, a glue gun and glue sticks, scissors and pinking shears.

  

The first thing I did was cut out all of the petals.  I pinned the paper template to the felt and cut each of them out.

I cut out 12 large ones, 10 medium ones and 10 small ones.  

Once they are all cut, I put a line of hot glue along the flat edge of the petal.  Then fold the sides to the center.

This takes a little time, but eventually all of them are done.  In the original tutorial they used fabric glue and placed a pot on top of the folded petals until they dried.  Personally, I don't have the patience to wait for glue to dry, so I used hot glue.  I found that if I just used a small amount and held it down for a few seconds using my fingernails that I didn't burn my fingers at all.   There is a bit of glue that squeezed out, but those portions will be covered up in the finished flower.

The next step is to cut out a 3 inch felt circle using scissors.  Then a 2 inch felt circle using pinking shears.  The final thing that you need to cut is a .50 inch x 4 inch strip of felt, cutting one side with pinking shears.

Roll the strip of felt and set aside.  Begin constructing the flower, but gluing the largest petals along the outside of the scissor cut 3 inch circle.

Continue gluing petals until they are all the way around the circle. 

Then begin the next row toward the center using the medium sized petals. 

After placing the third row using the smallest petals, put a drop of glue in the middle of the flower.  Place the circle cut with the pinking shears over the center of the flower and push it down into the middle of the flower.  Finally glue the rolled felt piece into the middle of the flower.  This will cover any exposed glue and hide the construction of the flower.  

My final step was to glue a clippie covered with velvet ribbon on the back.  

Here are some more shots of my completed flower and my beautiful model.

I have made two of these flowers now, one for practice and one for the tutorial.  I can't wait to experiment with the other things I can use them for.

The parties that I am linking this project to are on my side bar.

      

Wordy Wednesday #1

I love words!!!! There is just something amazing to me about putting words together in a creative or meaningful way. I am going to use Wordy Wednesday as a place to appreciate words that make my heart happy or make my mind take pause.

Today is Dr. Seuss' Birthday!  Since he was a master with words, today I will share some of my favorite lines written by Theodor Seuss Geisel.

"Today you are you, that is truer than true.  There is no one alive who is youer than you."

“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!”

Happy Birthday Mr. Geisel and Thank You for your timeless words!

Word Families

I think I have mentioned here that I am a Kindergarten Teacher.  I am one of the fortunate Teachers that get the privilege of job sharing.  I teach every other week.  So, I can be a semi-SAHM to our fabulous 3 year old daughter.  I am always looking online for better and innovative ways to teach.  

So, when I came across this incredible idea on The Snail's Trail, I had to try it for myself.  

This activity is a fun way for kids to practice reading short words using word families.  A word family is the end of a word, that makes other words when the beginning letter is changed.  Dr. Seuss (whose birthday is this week btw) was a master at using these word families.  Learning word families helps children begin to read groups of letters instead of having to sound out each individual letter.  This helps with reading fluency (speed), which eventually helps with reading comprehension (understanding what you just read).  I can't wait until my next work week, to see how the kids like it.  I love the colors and my students will love that they can move the little window over the beginning letters.  

It was so easy, and an excuse to collect paint chips!  I already have a love affair with paint chips.  

For this project, you need two types of paint chips.  The paint chips that have a little square cut out and the strip type with three or four different shades.  I tried to get them in similar color families to assist the children in keeping the correct beginning sounds and word families together.

All you have to do is write the word family to the right side of the little "window".  Then, on the matching strip, write a beginning sound for that word family in each shade.  

The children use them by placing the window over the beginning letter and reading the word. 

I also put mailing labels on the back of the beginning letter strips and wrote the word family that they go with.  My hope is that we can quickly get the right strips together and get reading instead of spending all of our time trying to match them up.

 I laminated my finished word family and beginning sound cards, but if you are just using it with one child you probably wouldn't need to.  With 30 sets of hands in our classroom we have to put armor on everything.