Teacher Appreciation Week 2013 by Kids.

Gifts made by my Son .

Gifts made by my daughter

 This is this time of the year I make my kids do little things for their teachers to mark our appreciation for all the hard work they put in.
We used materials which I had at home.



TerraCotta Pot :-

My kids are now grown up and are all ready to do a painting of the pot all by themselves. My Son painted the pots dark blue and yellow on the rim. My Daughter painted bright pink and purple on the rim. Always have used acrylic paints for such projects. Then I used something called bead paint (which can be used on fabric) , had it with me, and made them do dots  (written Thank you on top). They had to put dots on the written word. Then on the pot base where its blue and pink, I had bought this bead stickers from Micheal's craft store. One side of the pot they stuck a apple sticker, the other side they chose a flower sticker. This was a ready made sticker which I bought. So all they had to do was to peel it from the paper and stick on the pot.  This was easy for my 6 year old to do.

Badge design:- 
I bought this badge (3 of them as a pack) from the craft store. They designed it for their teachers. My son had 2 teachers and my daughter had 1. Instead of just drawing on paper, they can wear it as a badge and this was also easy for them to do. They cut out a round white paper and drew and colored it. Then they needed help in putting the white paper inside the badges.

Embroidery book mark :-
This was a tough and new project to try out by kids. It was not for my daughter but she still decided to give it a try. My Boy was curious about punching holes on the design. It was very simple flower design , and each petal is just a heart. So he had to punch holes on all heart (using the template I had) and then using embroidery thread I taught him one petal how to go about doing the design and he completed the rest.  He got the pattern immediately. I had to help out my 6 year old, with this more as she is still small for such crafts.
I had this snowflakes which they glued on the pot and on the book mark.

These were all done by the kids. There is one thing which I contributed, "Paper flowers using strips of paper" which you can view for detailed instructions on that project.

Refer to my other projects of terracotta painting or embroidery on Paper for detailed descriptions.
1. First terracotta pot painting.
2. Embroidery book mark
3. A bookmark- paper embroidery and Quilling.
4. Terracotta candle holder.

Navarathri Festival 2012 - Sanfrancisco Bridge

Our Navarathri Festival which is celebrated for 9 days where we arrange Indian dolls and this festival is mainly to worship the 3 Goddesses (Durga, Lakshmi , Saraswathi). To go along with the Indian dolls, we had a tradition in my family  (when I was growing up) to build something and keep it for those 9 days. My whole Family used to participate in creating or building some theme and be excited with this event. My kids are equally excited as me to build something innovative, so its really fun to do with them.

This year kids helped me build this San Francisco Bridge project, mainly my Son's idea and and little participation from my daughter and me. I helped him build the San Francisco (a depict of Golden gate bridge) , along with his contribution was the football field and base ball field. My daughter helped us paint the buildings (buttermilk cartons to depict) and the trees and arrange the people and beans which you see. Detail explanation of this project is given below.

I have explained the whole things as 3 projects, the center (Navarathri dolls), the Rangoli (left hand side ) and San francisco bridge (right hand side)

Navarathri Festival - Rangoli (on left), Main dolls (on center), Bridge project (on the right).

1. Navarathri Dolls :- As you see in the center of the photo, is a stand. We have placed all the Indian Dolls used for this tradition. There are some important dolls which are a must, some are Indian Gods and some are Indian Dolls representing a story behind them. They are all arranged to fit in that shelf. Each year we buy one new doll to add to the shelf.

Rangoli and dolls

2. Rangoli :-
In India we draw designs (Rangoli) on the floor. This time I decided to try out this ready made Rangoli designs made with colorful stones. Each piece is individual, I made this pattern of a big flower on this white card stock.
 The dolls you see was made with paper, christmas  ribbons, wooden head. My sister sent me the wooden round head (which she got from a kit), and I used paper for the body, pipe strings for the hand, and Christmas ribbons for the dress. The body is done with paper, you make a cone and fix the wooden head, Then take the pipe string and tie it around the neck and cone and bring it out as the hand. Then using the Christmas Ribbon make the dress for the doll as shown.


3. San Francisco Building project :-

San Francisco Golden Gate bridge project.

This was My Son's idea to build the Golden Gate Bridge, and we started with that, but made it big project by adding the football field and base ball field, and connecting all the roads , with parking lots, few tall buildings.


The Bridge is done with popsicle sticks,  colored the bride red, added thin sticks to get the height and used a twine string to give the effect. Used black paper for the road and coming down and connecting them to the other road which you see around just to see they are all connected. The water is blue glitter cardstock, The plastic piece from the cookies we cut out the section where the cookies are placed and used them for boat. My son drew people sitting on the boat and a lego man as you can see. Around the water we used wooden blocks to block the water. You can see between the roads and the water  we used white kidney beans (lentil) to depict rocks or stones.

 In the Front, he built a base ball field by putting grass and fence. Then he drew picture of field on paper, drew pictures of the players, and we used tooth pick to make them stand on a clay to give the 3d affect. Similarly on the back left side is the football field he printed out the field on the computer and he drew players and made them stand. The people watching the football game was done as last years project and we are used them this year too. He just drew people and we made them sit with tape.

Side view of the project.

The trees were drawn by my daughter and we used tape to stick it to the wall. The buildings you see on the right are buttermilk cartons, she painted them purple, yellow and blue, I helped her cut the windows and we placed them there. She arranged all the beans as stones, she drew all the white lines on the roads and parking lot.  The buildings on the canvas on the extreme right was done by my Son few years ago and had buildings and road and we used it this time also.

Then both of them arranged all the cars we had on the roads and on the bridge. Turned out to be a big project than planned but everybody who were invited loved this project. 

Artwork by my daughter

 Till now I've been including my Son's work and never got a chance and now I don't want to miss the opportunity of putting her artwork in my Blog.

These were done when she was 4 1/2 years (a year back) but decided to add it in here. She loves to draw hearts and flowers when she was 4 and even now. She calls them designs and draws it. So I asked her to draw 2 for her room so we can hang it in her room.

Halloween Decorations 2012

Every Year we make decorations for the halloween and decorate the front of our house. This year we reused some of our previous Halloween decorations  (the skeleton made from spoons and forks and the ghost from milk can)  from previous years and added one new decoration a monster (made from recycled bottles and card box).

On the door we had bought glow in the dark halloween stickers and made the kids paste them on the door along with the skeleton mades from spoons and forks.

Here are the detailed steps on how to make the the skeleton and monsters.

Skeletons :-

1. Take 4 forks and 1 spoon.You will need icrecream sticks for sticking them together and pipe cleaners for the ribs.

2. On the spoon back side draw the face (eyes , nose and teeth of the skeleton) and on the draw lines on the handle part. On the fork draw lines on the handle and on the edges draw dots to make it like the bones of the hand. These can be done by kids. I made my kids draw on the forks and spoons.

2.  Cut the ice cream sticks into small sizes (as shown) and glue the spoon in the center of the sticks. Then stick 2 forks on top for the hands and 2 on the bottom as the legs. 

3. Using one pipe cleaner make the ribs and glue them at the back.

4. Now your skeleton is all ready.

Monster :- holding candies

1. You will need 6 bottles  (drinking water plastic bottles). I had started saving these bottles in the starting of the month. Then I used a milk can for the head of the monster. Also you can use a shoe box  or (I used the empty box of the ice cream box) for the body of the monster. Then a old shirt for the monster.

2. On the milk can my Son drew the face for the monster.

3. Then we glued the milk can to the ice cream box. Then we glued 2 bottles for the hands of the monster. Used 4 bottles for the legs so that the monster can stand sturdy. 

4. Attached a basket on top of the milk can so that we can place candies when we are out.

5. Dressed the monster with that shirt. 

All these were combined effort from my 2 kids and me. It was fun seeing them so excited about the monster they created. It is a fun project  and a nice holder for candies (when we had gone trick or treating).

Teacher Appreciation Week 2012 - by my Son

Teacher Appreciation Week for my Son's Teacher.

Its again this time of the year where we appreciate our kids teachers for all their effort. My Son loves to come up with ideas and since he is 8 years, I cannot influence him too much with my ideas also. He was very clear that he did not want to do the same as his sisters ideas, hence a different post as the gifts/ideas have individually come from them and are different.

Day 1 - Acrostic Bookmark- He has come up with an acrostic poem bookmark for his teacher.

Bookmark (Front side)

Bookmark (Back side)

 During my Son's birthday we had donated a book to the class. So he wanted to make a bookmark which his teacher will use for that book and later for herself, as she is reading this book to the class. He loves rainbow colors and he loves acrostic poems. Last year he has done acrostic for  "Teacher," he modified it to describe his current teacher and did a acrostic for Rainbow. So basically its a  "Rainbow bookmark for a RAINBOW (Acrostic) TEACHER (Acrostic)". My only help was for printing out for him and putting contact paper to the book mark so that it will not get dirty easily.

Paper fortune cookies

Day 2 - Fortune appreciation  - This idea came up when I asked my Son to come up with 10 things he likes about his teacher which in turn will turn into memories of 2nd grade. He easily came up with the 10 things, but we wanted the teacher to enjoy it in a unique way. Tuesday is the day where 2nd grade parents are providing lunch for all the teachers, so the idea clicked of presenting it in fortune cookie way. My son loves fortune cookies when we go to Chinese restaurants, so we decided to make it "paper fortune cookie" where his teacher can open it and read them. I have bought a take out box and filled it with these cookies and put a small note for his teacher. Initially idea was to make my son do the paper cookie but it was hard so I had to do them all. Got the steps from youtube.

Sail boat thank you

Day 3 - Sail boat Thank You -  During my Son's spring break, he painted a terracotta pot holder plate. He painted the plate blue inside with red rim, and Yellow outside with green rim. The colors were chosen by him and painted by him. Only the glazing /shine paint was done by me. The idea was to use this plate to hold the fortune cookies, but once this was done, he loved the piece and wanted to use it to do the sailboat for his teacher. So he finally learn to make a sailboat with a paper and pasted it to the plate. Since the plate looked too plain, I bought some fish stickers, he stuck them near the boat. On the sail boat he colored them with a sketch pen and on the base he wrote "Thank you for a smooth sailing of learning. It was Fun". Making of sailboat was much easier for him than the paper fortune cookie.

Day 4 -  Puzzle - I asked him to come with some puzzle for his teacher.  He had read about code word (i.e for each letter you assign a number) and instead of writing the letters you put dashes and a number for each dash (representing the letter). Since it was his idea I did not want to change anything. All I did was to stick it to a colored card stock and rolled it and tied a orange ribbon to make it look presentable.

 Day 5 - Gift Card Holder - My son wanted to give a gift  (gift card) which will be useful for the teacher. So I decided to come up with something nice for his Teacher. So I designed a Gift Card holder. Since Teachers keep getting gift cards, I decided to create one (which can hold about 12 gift cards). They can keep it in the car instead of carrying all the gift cards in their hand bags.  Hoping his teacher will find it useful.

My Son is going to come with the order (he wants to give) his teacher. I've just put them all up here in my own order.

My Son came up with some ideas and so did I with some, but I had intense joy in helping my Son do this for his teachers, as this is our only way to show our appreciation and gratitude for all their efforts and time they put in each and every day.

Teacher Appreciation Week 2012 - by my daughter

Teacher Appreciation Week for my Daughter's Teachers.

Its again this time of the year where we appreciate our kids teachers for all their effort. This time I wanted to bring it out from the kids with very little help of mine. Since my daughter has started going to school, and is able to follow instructions, this time it was much easier than last year to make her do for her teachers.

We made gifts for the 5 days but gave it all on one day. She wanted to do it all on one day. We chose middle of the week and decided to give it to her teachers.

Day 1 Bookmark  - My daughter reads very well, and so wanted to thank them with a bookmark.

bookmark (front side)

bookmark (back side)

This is a very simple bookmark. If you see my other projects, this bookmark (in red) is a blank bookmark bought from the craft store (Micheal's craft store). On the Front side I had stuck a blue card stock. The flowers you see were bought  from this craft store. It had pins attached where you can prick a hole and fix it to the card with that pin. So I wanted to keep it very simple. The backside of the bookmark, I asked my daughter to write a note for their teacher "I love to read, thanks to you that I read so well!". She drew a small little girl and wrote her name below that. So this way we both put in effort.

Thank you note

Day 2 Thank you Note - My daughter made this on computer with the software kid pix. She loves to work on kid pix software, so I asked her to make a card for her teachers.  She  chose a rose and she added the border design and wrote a thank you and  her name. So I only helped her by printing this out and sticking to another thick card stock.

Paper Clay Magnets

Day 3 Magnets - During her spring break, she was doing things with paper clay so we decided to do some for her teachers. So all the 3  (we had clay molds) which she used to get the shape. She painted them last week before giving them. My part was to help her paint  the glaze paint (the glaze/finish) on them. Then the star face was drawn by me as she had already gone to bed. Following day after they were dry I had to stick magnets at the back, so they can be used as magnets. So that was my part but making the clay magnet was my daughter's part.

Day 4 Thank You Card - She wanted another card (with stickers).

I asked her to draw something for her teachers, and you won't believe it, she came with this heart sign (With I love you written inside) and the thank you coming as the string, she made it like a balloon, which I was really taken back. This was done on a white paper, so we used it as the inside of the card (stuck it to the inside). The front side had flower stickers so we used one flower and wrote Teacher appreciation week , and she stuck some bead stickers on top and bottom. Very simple but she loved doing it for them.

Day 5 - Gift for the teacher - She wanted to give something which they will use. Packed it in a little pouch and put all the item/gifts in one gift bag.

My daughter came up with some ideas and so did I with some, but I had intense joy in helping my daughter do this for her teachers, as this is our only way to show our appreciation and gratitude for all their efforts and time they put in each and every day.

Valentines gifts - A bookmark and ILove made by kids

My kids are growing up to a point where they can do their own valentine craft ideas for their friends and teachers. I'm teaching them to make something creative for their friends.

A Bookmark - My daughter who is 4 years old, crafted bookmark with Popsicle stick, foam heart stickers and bead stickers. It was easy for her to do this without my help. The heart stickers (foam) come in 3 different sizes so she put the big on the top, little big in the middle and the tiny one as the third. In between the spaces of the hearts, she chose 2 bead stickers (which I use for my other projects with kids) and pasted them. At the back she wrote "For my friend" and in the front her name. She gave the bookmark, along with a pencil and valentine cards and sticker all wrapped inside a treat bag.

ILove - My son who is 7 years old wanted him to craft something with the candy as they exchange cards and candies for valentines. So instead of giving just card and candy we picked up this idea from a website. It was easy for him to attempt this one with little help. From a target store, we bought conversational candy boxes. He wrapped the candy box in red card stock. Then I had downloaded the ILove valentine play list and the menu dial and he cut them out and pasted them on the red card stock. Then we went and bought strings from Micheal's (thin wool) and pasted them to the candy box and the other ends to Hershey's kisses milk chocolate (as the ear piece). Turned out to be a cool idea.

For the teachers of both my kids we did the same ILove but attached a gift card. First we wanted put the gift card inside the ILove box, but in the end decided to paste with a tape to the ILove box at the back. All the teachers came personally to us not only thanked us but really liked the cool gift ideas.

Pranay won 3rd in Year book contest 2012

Proud again of my Son for winning 3rd prize in the year book contest. This year there is a 3 way tie for the 3rd place and its very exciting to hear and waiting to see how its going to come up in the year book.

Year Book contest is a contest conducted by my Son's school open to all students every year. They need to draw a page telling what their school is about and if they win 1st it will be printed up in front page and 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th winner's page will be at the back page of their year book. But this time its only 1st , 2nd and 3rd (3 kids who won 3rd) !

Definitely have to give him credit for winning it again.

Details about his Drawing

At the top - He wrote the school name and the year (2011-2012) below the school name. He chose to write these in one color which is blue.

At the center - We had asked him to come up with something different from last time. So he came up with a theme from things he has seen or done. He came up with 10 things, since its difficult to put all the 10 items for the theme, we asked him to choose 5 best out of the 10 he had written down.
Here they are -
1. he had planted some plants in school, he got excited and drew a man watering some plants and trees and added the caption "Grow trees".
2. "No littering sign" he has seen in many places. He drew a park by adding slides, kids playing soccer and put that sign "no littering" in the park .
3. He had seen solar power/panel being added in some homes in the neighborhood so he added that by drawing homes and added "save energy" as the caption for that.
4. Then "save on gas" he has been hearing a lot. So from home he drew people either walking or biking to school and drew a school on the right hand side below.
5. "Helping the old" was the last idea in the center which he picked up from a book. He drew a boy helping an old man cross the street.
These 5 ideas basically describe his theme.

At the bottom - The main theme was written at the bottom which is "learning to make the world a better place".

Finally finished the page with some coloring as he did not want to keep the page white.

If you want to see last year's year book page he had won 4th here it is. Refer to "Proud of my son for winning 4th in YearBook".

Navarathri Festival, Rangoli and World Racers creation

This Festival is celebrated for 9 days where we arrange Indian dolls and its a religious function. To go along with the Indian dolls, we had a tradition (when I was growing up) to build something and keep it for those 9 days. My whole Family used to participate in creating or building some theme and be excited with this event. My son was super excited this year and built a farm 2 years ago and so this time he wanted to do something. I wanted to make my 4 year old daughter participate so I did a Rangoli design on a white card stock and took her help in painting the design and used her help to stick the flowers stickers.

I have explained the whole things as 3 projects, the center (Navarathri dolls), the Rangoli (as you see on the left side ) and World Racers Event (as you see on the right).


Navarathri dolls : As you see in the center of the photo, is a stand. We have placed all the Indian Dolls used for this tradition. There are some important dolls which are a must, some are Indian Gods and some are Indian Dolls representing a story behind them. They are all arranged to fit in that shelf. Each year we buy one new doll to add to the shelf.



Rangoli project - In India we draw designs (Rangoli) on the floor and use color powder and color them. Here, I drew a Rangoli design on the White Card Stock, and My daughter and me painted the design with acrylic paints and drew a border with red sketch pen. My daughter chose the colors for the Rangoli and also in buying the artificial flower to decorate the rangoli and fill the white area.


World Racers Event - called by my Son as a project. He used 2 Lego boats called the "world racers". He built those Legos all by himself. He created a race event between the 2 boats he had done with Lego's and people have come to watch the final race event. I've just explained his project in 5 parts.

Part 1 of the project - He used two shiny glitter blue card stock paper to make it look like water and placed the 2 boats. With Lego's he built the deck and placed it on the side. He also used a 3rd boat from his regular Lego's and used it as a Police boat on water. To surround the water we put wooden fence (we used clay and put the wooden fence on the clay so it stands).

Part 2 was to build a road and parking lots. So in front you will see a gray card stock which he used to build the road and yellow lines to create a 2 way traffic. The road goes inside the building where the event takes place into the parking lot. The parking lot was with black card stock and he drew white lines to divide the car space. He added some orange Lego cones to indicate the exit.

Part 3 was to build the ticket counter, Lego store and restroom. So we put the artificial grass (for the lawn) , and created a path way for people to walk to the seating area. First on the right hand side we put a box and created a ticket counter and a Lego Store. Then we used another box and built a restroom. On the right hand side, you will notice a canvas painted by my Son (as one of his summer activities). The painting created a scene of lot of buildings (movie theater , bank, hotel ..etc) so we used this to create a background effect. The painting also had a gray road which we connected to the road we built so it was all connected.

Part 4 - was to create an audience. For this my Son he folded black card stock to build stairs where people can be seated. He put a green big card stock at the back wall and stuck the stairs to it and placed the other end to another box. He built a Lego stairs and connected to this box so people can climb to it. For people he drew people and colored them and I helped him sticking it on the stairs.

Part 5 - The Green board was completed by adding Lights, score board (this was my part as he was in school and I had to finish all this in one day). He had colored the "welcome sign board" which I stuck it in the middle of the green board and I wrote the 2 team names "Red skin vs Great white sharks".

To make it complete we put the fence (with tooth picks) on the audience stand, and also near the parking lot, also added some pots (with flower bush) to decorate the empty area.

The idea came from him and he took my help. This project looks hard but was very easy and simple. The major parts were done when he had a holiday one day. Then another day to arrange everything.

Indeed started of with a small thing, but by doing all this our hearts our filled with true satisfaction and felt like a grand one.

Summer Crafts - ceramic crafts and clay projects

During Summer the kids got to spend time doing doing crafts apart as their indoor activity and little bit of watching TV. I got to spend lot of time with them doing clay projects (Terra Cotta and regular colorful clays) and taking them to Color me Mine a studio for painting ceramic items. Apart from outing, they did lots and lots of coloring and drawing on paper, which they always loved to do. This blog mentions about the ceramic project and clay project.

Color me mine Activity- As you know I'm a big fan of ceramic paintings and done a lot of them. I also have taken my Son many times for him to paint. I started this year with my Daughter and got her introduced.
My Daughter - Its her first experience this year. She started with her 1st one with painting a cup pink and purple inside. The second one she did was a fish with orange and black.

My Son - This was his 5th project and he chose the ship/boat. He was very comfortable doing this one as he has done it multiple times.
They also did small items like the cupcakes and a candy by my Son and a cupcake and Hippo by my daughter. So they just loved doing all of it.


Clay Projects Kids got to try different types of clay -terra cotta, regular kids play dough and also a sculpy clay which you can mold and bake in the end.

Sculpy Clay The sculpy was fun for them to try out play with them. In the end we took few of them baked it in the oven as per the instructions and they saw the clay could harden and they were amazed to see the texture before and after baking.
Terra cotta Clay Kids loved the mud like effect of the clay. My son did a football, I did a basket and my daughter did a birds nest with eggs inside. They just loved doing.

Other activities was canvas painting, drawing and coloring, playing with the soft toys and playing with their tent inside.

Teacher Appreciation Week 2011

Its again this time of the year where we appreciate our kids teachers for all their effort. This time I wanted to bring it out from the kids with very little help of mine. Since my daughter has started going to school, both my kids have done for their teachers.

My Daughter's Work :
We did 5 things giving her 1 per day. I kept it very simple ,and wanted her to color and draw.
1) drawing1 and drawing2 - very simple, wrote Thank you , she colored it, and I did the border with different colors. Idea is from my daughter, she in a blank paper keeps coloring different colors (think lines), so thought of using her idea and coloring different colors around for border. Her idea but I did the coloring as it was a lot for her to do.

2) drawing 3 - When I asked her to draw something for teacher, she drew 4 balloons. So instead of 4 I asked her to draw 7 for each letter in (T E A C H E R). Then came up with some describing words for each letter. [T-alented, E-nergetic, A-ctive, C-aring, H-elpful, E-xtraordinary and R-esponsible.]

3) drawing 4 - Asked her to draw an apple and color it (helped her with drawing of apple) but coloring is her work. I wrote the happy teachers appreciation week in pencil and she wrote on top of it with a black pen.

4) The last gift was a 8X10 photo of her class doing a silly pose. It was very cute and I thought they bought out the best in them, this can be a good memory for them to keep.
Just to add "She enjoyed doing all of it", and that's what makes me HAPPY !


My Son's Work :
It was from May 9th - May 13th and we again did 5 things 1 for each day. He wanted to very similar to his sisters but a little different.
1) Drawing1 - very simple, wrote Thank you , He drew and colored it, and He did the border with different colors. Idea is from my daughter,but he liked it and wanted to do it exactly similar.

2) Writing1 - We got this poem from the web and thought it was very appropriate for his teacher. I wanted to give each letter (describing her) each day to make her special, but my Son had forgotten to give her the first 3 days. So we just gave this sheet on the third day.

3) Drawing 2 - When I asked my Son to draw something for his teacher, he drew kids , and he drew 20 of them to represent all the kids in his class and he wrote " You are the best". This was totally his idea.

4) Drawing 3 - He also drew a Robot and wanted to give it to his teacher, so I asked him to write "From Pranay" And thank you on it. He loves Robots and wants to be a Robot, so why not represent this drawing to be him ? It was his idea of drawing this Robot but my idea of "representing my son as Robot".

5) The last gift was a 8X10 photo of his class all of them dressed up as 101 dalmatians. It was very cute and I thought She bought out the best in them, this can be a good memory for her to keep.

It makes me happy when I make the kids do it for their teachers. This is very little effort we put for all the efforts the teachers put throughout the year.

For my other appreciation crafts done by kids refer to the post "Teachers Appreciation 2010"

Proud of my Son - Won 4th in Yearbook contest

Proud of my Son - He has won 4th prize in YearBook Contest in his school.

Year Book contest is a contest conducted by my Son's school open to all students every year. They need to draw a page telling what their school is about and if they win it will be printed up in front page and 2nd, 3rd and 4th winner's page will be at the back page of their year book. I could not wait till year book comes out to share this exciting news. But I am eagerly waiting to see where exactly they will print his name in this year's YEARBOOK.

Definitely have to give him credit for this. As my effort was only in motivating him to participate this year again and getting him to focus to do a wonderful work. I'm glad I asked him to do it.

My Son has participated last year in two such events (yearbook contest and red ribbon week) which involved drawing and coloring and also this year in the language school (Tamil school) - (Pongal festival contest) which involved drawing and coloring.

I would like to just end- Participating is not new for him but WINNING is definitely NEW !

Details about his Drawing

At the top - They were supposed to write a caption representing who they are. He also put a gold trophy representing that "we are number 1".

At the center - He likes drawing people. So it was not too hard for him. He has come a long way from last year from simple to adding more details.

He designed a star and put a star in purple and added a face with eyes, nose and mouth and was particular he had glasses and smiling. Then he wrote S U P E R each letter on 5 sides of yellow star and above the purple wrote STAR (saying SUPER STAR).
Then he wanted to put all events of his school- pumpkin panic, reading club, running club , walkathon and science fair, so he drew the events around the star as it was difficult to put it inside the star. Then he drew 2 games - 2 square game and wall ball which kids play a lot during recess representing recces time too !! Added a computer lab too as he loves computer lab. Labeled every drawing representing them.

At the bottom - He loves colors so he wrote the school name and year in different colors. If you notice the "Stevens" in rainbow colors and "Creek" he used different colors which he did not use before. For "2010-2011" he said that it was GOLD (like the trophy on top)

Finally finished the page with some coloring as he did not want to keep the page white.

Valentines Heart Decorated by Kids

Wishing Everybody a "HAPPY VALENTINES DAY"  from our Family to Yours !! These valentines were decorated by my kids. It was my Son's  sharing at school where they had to decorate a valentine heart and he made it so that the Teacher can hang it in class. We cannot do this project without my daughter's cooperation, so we asked her to decorate one too. We decided to hang this at our door.

Red heart to the left:-  Crafted by my Son. Cut out the red heart from a card stock. My Son wanted to use shiny beads, sticker beads and feathers. In the middle he wanted to write "Happy Valentines Day". So he drew 3 borders to mark the space for each of the 3 items he wanted to paste. Then he applied glue on the stock and started sticking the shiny beads and feathers. Then he added little of bead stickers in the end. Then he added gold glitter glue to the borders where the pencil drawing was shown. Then wrote "Happy Valentines Day" in pencil and darkened it with a sharpie pen.

Red heart to the right :- Crafted by my daughter. My son cut out the red heart for her. She wanted the 3 butterflies so we made a hole and attached the butterfly for her. Then I applied the glue, but she was too good in sticking the shiny beads. Then I asked her to write happy Valentines day, and she wrote "Happy Happy Valentines Day" in pencil and darkened it with a sharpie pen. I guess this was one of her few projects and she got excited to do this. Then gave her little bead stickers to stick in the empty spaces. Added a little glitter glue around.

This was indeed a short and fun project to do with them. Thanks to my Son' school for this Idea.

Bookmark - For sharing

Bookmary By My Son :- January of 2011, My Son had a project which he needed to make or share something with everybody in his class . He decided to give out bookmarks made by him.  Since he has started using computer, wanted him to practice some of his computer skills here. !

Very simple to make it, buy the bookmark (plain red color) from Micheal's craft store.  Using a computer software he created stickers and I printed them out on a sticker sheet. So all he had to do is cut out the stickers and paste them accordingly as shown in the picture. This was a very nice project.  We chose "Super Reader" sticker at the top, a star sticker for the center and smiley sticker at the bottom. He also wanted a small sticker "bookmark" to indicate its a bookmark.

Embroidery bookmark by me :- One in the center bookmark was made by me for his Teacher.
Since he was giving out to his class, I decided to do the embroidery bookmark for his Teacher. This was chosen from my previous designs so it not too tough. Pre-pricked the embroidery design with a special piercing tool and pricking pad. Completed the embroidery and came up with my own ideas to finish it off with a heart embroidery on the top, and glued a flower in the middle.

It was a nice project again to do with my Son and one for myself for his Teacher.

For our embroidery bookmarks projects refer to the blogs
"Bookmark by my Son" , "Embroidery Bookmark", "Bookmark and Quilling project".

May flower basket

One of my son's homework was to do a May flower basket and drop it off at the neighbor's house. Since I have a three year old also, we did a total of 3 baskets, one made by my Son, one made by my daughter (only the bead sticking part) and one by me just to show the kids how to do it.

Take a white paper and fold in in a cone shaped. Fold the bottom and stick it with a tape (middle and right one as shown on the photo), or leave it in tapered form. (left most one). Then with pipe cleaner make the handle as shown. Since pipe cleaners are easyto bend and fold, we used this to make the handle.

To decorate the basket we used bead stickers. It was easy to stick and make any design by kids. For my other projects with bead stickers refer to the project "Goody bag with 3d gem stickers", and "bookmark created by my Son".

Filled it with our garden flowers and handed one of them to our neighbor.

It was fun easy and kids loved doing activities with Moms !!

Bookmark created by my Son

As April approaches you know I'm preparing for the goody bag as its my kids Birthdays. I started this bookmark project and we suddenly we had to move to a different house. So instead of stopping and not doing anything as I had to pack for our move, I decided to involve my Son into getting to do bookmark for his school friends.

Very simple to make it, buy the bookmark (plain red color) from Micheal's craft store. I had these beads stickers which I asked him to stick. Then for the center, we had bought some stickers during valentines day time, so we used those and pasted them in the center.

Punched a whole on the center top, and tied a blue ribbon was the only thing done by me. We left the behind blank so that his friends can personalize them the way they want to !!

My son is 6 years old and they keep reading a lot of books both from school and public library. Hence I decided to do this so that all the kids at that age are into reading and excited about reading or getting books from library both at school and public library.

My son loved doing this project even though we had to about 30 of them. I had fun watching him do this project with a very little guidance from me.

For more information on my bookmark projects refer to my previous posts "Embroidery bookmark" and one I did for his school teacher "A Bookmark- paper embroidary and Quilling ".

Thanksgiving Game and Activity

Game played as a family and Decorating a Turkey feather was the activity.

For my son's school project we had to decorate one turkey feather to make one "family turkey" for their classroom. We had to decorate it however we like. This was a project "for family to do together and mainly we had to make it represent our family."

My idea of doing this project together was to allow my son to decorate the feather how he wanted and the only way to include my 2 year old daughter and husband to be a part of this was to play a game and attach it to the turkey feather. Since as a family we do lot of activities together, we decided to do this thanksgiving game as an "activity together".

ThanksGiving Game :- I found this game over the internet when searching for thanksgiving ideas. This game is called "Thankerchief" - Pass a thankerchief (handkerchief) around in a circle. The player holding the "thankerchief" when the poem ends, must say aloud, one thing for which they are thankful for. The poem is as follows :

Thankerchief, thankerchief, around you go
Where you'll stop, nobody knows,
But when you do, someone must say,
What they are thankful for this day.

We played a game as a family and it turned out to be a huge success !! My kids still want to play this game !! They just loved it. Since we played this I represented this on a card. Inside of the card as we open I have put all our names and on the right hand side (inside of the card) we have written what we are thankful for.

Feather Decoration - Coming to the main part of decorating the feather which was my sons contribution , he asked for feathers, glitters, leaves and buttons (as per the instructions given ) and I had told him only to include feathers in the middle with the "card I had made". The rest of the area was totally his idea of decorating with all the items.

He actually surprised me with his motor skills from creating patterns, applying glue and sticking all the items. My assistances was very minimal (except for the card) and enjoyed more by watching him decorate the feather.


Back Side of Feather - At the back of the feather he wrote his name, room number and his grade. I created the back side of the card to include the "contribution information" and mainly a "thank you" note to the school for giving this wonderful idea of decoration which got us to play this game as a family and a group hug.
This Game and activity turned out to be the best activity done for this month.