Letter S Preschool Ideas

We've been doing a small preschool home group with two other families for the last few months.  Every week we rotate houses and work on one letter of the alphabet.  This week was letter "S" at our house, which was really exciting for me because I had a ton of letter "S" ideas.  This was so much easier than the mom that had to think up stuff for the letter Q a few weeks ago (but she did an awesome job with quiche as a snack, yum!).


This is what we decided to do:

1) Make Sparkle Soap!

You need:
-plastic cups (or an ice cube tray, or candy molds, or soap molds),
-a microwave safe container,
-glitter (the finer the better to make sure it washes down the sink with no problems),
-food coloring,
-non-stick spray (not in the picture, oops),
-and pure glycerin soap that you can buy in craft stores.  This kind comes in little bricks from Hobby Lobby.

Spray down your cups/molds with cooking spray.  Melt the glycerine in the microwave according to package directions.  This brand took exactly 33 seconds per brick to fully melt without getting too hot, and I stirred after 15 seconds.  Add one drop of the food coloring of your choice.  You can also use soap colorings, but I didn't want to buy that just for this one project.  Food coloring seems to work well for this purpose.  I have read that it can bleed if you're trying to make multi-colored layered soaps, so use the soap dye if you're going to get fancy with this project.  Pour in a bit of glitter and let the kids stir it up with a spoon.  Make sure to carefully supervise because this stuff can get hot!  We have a small group so that was no problem.

Then pour it into your cup/mold/ice cube tray and let it sit.  They were firm within 1/2 an hour.  We used the cups so we could cut them off if the soaps got stuck inside, and they make a little number six on the soap, which also starts with the letter "S".  Bonus.

 The glitter will settle a bit to make the top extra sparkly.

Wrap them in plastic wrap for the kids to take home.  I must say, my child has never been so excited to take her next bath.  Green is her favorite color ever.

We also did a few other projects.

2) Do-it-yourself Shrinky-dink

This is a good way to learn the "sh" sound.   Remember shrinky-dinks?  Well it turns out that all you need to make one at home is #6 plastic and some permanent markers.  Over at the Curbly you can find the directions for making your own shrinky-dink.  We used clear plastic trays that hold cupcakes at our local grocery store.  They gave me one for free when I asked at the counter.  I pre-cut the plastic in a circle shape and let the kids color whatever design they wanted.  My daughter drew a green dog on hers.  Then you pop them in the oven and watch them shrink.

3) Snack Time

We made Spaghetti dogs.  Basically you take hot dogs and let the kids spear them with pieces of spaghetti.  Then you boil them until the noodles are done.  I think they were a hit. More photos (and the source of this photo) can be found at Plum Pudding.  They were tasty with a side of cucumber slices.


And I made Jello Spirals ahead of time to eat with the spaghetti dogs.  Directions can be found at Joy of Jello (pic source) and the Kraft recipe webpage.  They're kind of like fruit-rollups, without any of the actual... fruit... um yeah but very tasty.  You could also call them Jello Snails for another letter "S".


All of this stuff took about an hour to do.  We've had so much fun doing preschool at home with our friends.  I'm going to miss these days when my little girl goes to Kindergarten in the fall.

LDS Primary Sharing Time Reminder Wristbands

For those of you that are LDS too, I've made up some wristbands to use when children are assigned to read a scripture at church.  When a child is assigned to read the scripture next week, we tape one of these wristbands on their wrist to help remind them (and their parents) that they have an assignment.  I print these out a few months in advance with the topics and dates so they're ready to go during Sharing Time.  It would be easy to change these to talk or prayer reminders as well.  They've been useful for us, so I thought I'd share.  Just click on the picture below to download.  They're in Word format in my Google Docs.

Each page prints 8 wristbands with the 2012 "Choose the Right" theme.

 

(just a note... they look a little wonky when viewing through Google Docs, but when you download it in Word they look right)

I've Been Busy...

Just not busy posting things on my blog, apparently.

But I have made things.  Crafty things, and I have proof.  Here's how I've been spending my idle hours.

Making pants for my daughter...

The elephant fabric is from Walmart.  These are flat-front pants, and I made up the pattern from another pair of her pants, which is so easy to do.  The pattern for the pocket and directions can be found at Made.

And more pants...

This is some kind of tweed loose weaved fabric that my mom gave me.  The fabric was so ugly, but I thought it would make a perfect pair of dressy pants that have a bit of vintage feel to them.  You know, the kind of pants that only little kids and little old men can pull off.  Again, patterned from another pair of his pants, with directions from Made.  These pants are lined with an old t-shirt of mine.

And Christmas ornaments...

I made a bunch of these elves from Martha Stewart.  It kept my hands busy for a few evenings while I watched episode after episode of Deep Space Nine on Netflix.  Ah memories...  Does anyone else think the first season is horrible?  I do. 

I think the orange scarf one is my favorite.  I've always been partial to orange.  I made a lot of little elves and I gave some away at an ornament party.

And I made a few paper birds as well (idea from here), but I didn't like them as much as the elves.  They're made from a really old book my husband had about whooping cranes.  I had a hard time finding pages that didn't have gloomy words like "death" "demise" and "extinction."  Not very cheerful.  Poor whooping cranes.

And I painted a mural on my kitchen/dining room wall a while ago, but I never got around to taking a picture, so here's a poorly lit photo.  I bought a pattern from jenloveskev on etsy (only 5 bucks, awesome deal), and used it for about 1/2 of the wall, but it wasn't big enough so I improvised the rest.  Now my dining room is a birch tree forest.

I was scared to paint this, but I'm glad I did.  My mantra while painting was "I can always paint it over" and I had extra grey paint to cover it up if I hated it.  But I love it.  It reminds me of the old forest wallpaper that I had when I was a little kid.  I used to have an imaginary family that lived in my wallpaper forest, just an imaginary mommy and sister my parents tell me.  Now my kids have a place to sit and imagine too.

Airplane Pillowcase

I saw this airplane design on Pinterest and right away I knew it would be perfect for my son's room.  I've been slowly adding airplanes to his room to transition it from baby to little boy.  (See this post for an airplane on canvas, as an example).  I was really hoping she'd have a tutorial on her blog for her adorable plush airplanes and blanket, but I was left to try to make them on my own.  I decided to try it out first on a pillowcase.  

I used Steam a Seam 2 to fuse the fabric pieces on, and then I zig zag stitched all the way around each piece.  After the airplane was attached, I zig zag stitched a trail behind it.  Techinically I think I was supposed to use some kind of stabilizer on the inside, but it worked fine without and it has even washed up well.

For the propeller I just fused two pieces of tan cotton fabric to each other and stitched around the edge.  I sewed it to the airplane with a green button.  The button doesn't seem to bother my son when he sleeps on it.

I'm considering making several airplanes like this on large quilt squares and then piecing them together for a twin quilt, but that seems like a lot of work.

I drew the airplane parts by hand, and I traced them onto a page for you to use if you'd like.  I didn't trace the propeller, the seat (just make an oval), or the stars on the wings, so you'll just have to wing it.  Get it?  Wing... haha....um... yeah.

Click on the picture to download pdf template: