Scrapbooking our summer memories

What's not to love about scrapbooking?  

Especially when it's a summer activity to keep your new first grader busy.

And it's totally educational...art, spelling, handwriting, figuring out those rolly-scrapbook-tape-things (science?).

Only takes a few supplies (and a 40% off coupon to Joann's).  I bought a 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 pre-cut pad to make it easy for her to mat the photos.  Genius.

The final product - too cute for words and great memories!

Yes, she wrote "By Abigail B." on every page...completely adorable.

Father's Day Notepads

Two years ago my daughter (3) and I made a fun Father's Day gift for her Daddy.  Her little stick figure drawings of our family have always been our favorites - and I thought it would be fun to incorporate them into the gift.

I took one of her drawings to the Kinkos, and minimized it using the copy machine.  I put two of the smaller copies together on one page and made about 50 copies.  Totally a cut and paste job. (Of course, you could get much more technical and neat by scanning in the drawing to make your template beforehand.)

I had the nice Kinko's employee cut the pages in half, and make little notepads out of them.  It was very inexpensive, I think less than $5.

My husband loved the notepads, and still uses them for work (and our daughter loves to see them in his office).

(I think we may do this again this year, it is so fun to see the progression of the drawings as they get older.)

Linking up with Hip Homeschool Hop!

In the mood to paint!

This Friday was full of art fun!  It was a beautiful day to have the doors and windows open and do some painting, so we finished up our school work and broke out the paints.

I saw this post at 1+1+1=1 (inspired by this one) and decided this was just the fall art project we needed this week! 

Kinder-girl had fun painting a paper towel roll (which I have in abundance these days - can't throw them away any more!).

(Side note, I just love how she put on the headband herself today, so cute)

I traced the leaves for her with a thick black marker and she cut (some of) them out.

Love the concentration!  Yes, we did use double sided tape.  Glue stick is over-rated!

Our first kindergarten fall art project.  So fun!

Community Helpers: Mail Carrier

We are having fun starting our study about the mail.  Since K-girl LOVES to send letters in the mail, this is one I know she will enjoy.

Today I quickly put together a felt picture of a mailbox, and she provided the picture of herself delivering a letter to “great-grandma” (who incidentally, we got to visit this weekend).

 

I love the idea of making felt pictures, I hope to keep adding to our collection of shapes – since it’s so easy to do!  (A great artist I am not, that’s what makes teaching a kindergartener fun, she doesn’t notice!!)

Play time (and fine motor skills)

 

We had a nice relaxing Labor day weekend.  I had found an inexpensive weaving loom for little girl (oh the memories of making lots and lots of pot holders!) and while she was working away (she thinks its a pattern maker, we didn’t get to the actual weaving part yet), I needed something for Josh to do.

Thankfully I had read this post from Muffin Tin Mom.  I loved looking through the flicker photo round up of preschool fine motor skill activities….turns out Josh likes stringing beads on pipe cleaners, a lot.