A look at what I have been doing for the last 2 months...

I have been spending the last two months working on my sister's Christmas present. She is one of those people who can be hard to buy for because if she wants something, she just goes and buys it. One day I was online looking at pictures of nothing important when a came across a picture of a video game character made from Perler beads. These are the beads that you put on the pegboards and iron them to fuse them together. My sister loves video games, and I thought, how cool would it be to make a video game Christmas tree for her. So I started researching, and was amazed by how popular the Perler beads were in the gaming and geek community! I found hundreds of pictures of video game related items, some of which were just a few inches tall to some that are six feet tall! I picked out some great pictures, and started creating. Two months and 100 items later, I am done. I gave my sister her tree and wall decorations early, since it wouldn't fit under the tree at my parents' house. I set up the tree in her library/video game room while she was at work, and waited until she came home. She was so excited, she squeed like a little girl! The picture of her and the tree is the only picture I have of her that is clear, she was bouncing around a lot!

Circle Weaving

My third graders have been circle weaving, and they love it! It is always a fight every year to get them to stop, and throughout the rest of the year, they will ask if they can do another one. This year, I let the students decorate the outer edge of the weavings and explained to the children that they should use colors that they used in the weaving portion. I am still in the process of grading them, but I got a picture of this one, which was super successful!

Art Show snowmen!

The second graders had their music/art show this evening, and since the music teacher was showcasing Christmas music, I decided to have them do some sort of winter picture. I have many snowmen lessons that I do, but decided to research on pinterest for some new ones. I found a great one here: http://mrsjacksonsartroom.blogspot.com/ (you gotta love pinterest!) Anyway... I fell in love with it, and had to have my students make them. So, 92 snowmen later this is what we had for the art show, and let me tell you, the parents LOVED them! Just in case you were wondering why they were not all in a straight row, they were hung on a wall where there was a ramp and handrails, so they had to be staggered in order to not go behind the hand rail. Unfortunately, I am not tall enough to hang them high enough that this wouldn't be a problem. I'm still waiting on my last growth spurt... it just hasn't come yet!

Secret Snowmen

I stayed after school today to hang all of the faculty and staff snowmen today, and there was an amazing turnout. We had a grand total of 47 snowmen, way more than I ever expected! What was a lot of fun was watching the teachers come by and try to guess them all. At one point, there were 10 teachers pointing out snowmen and excitedly calling out their answers. It was hysterical. I can't wait for the students to see them tomorrow!

Sneak Peek!

I have taken an idea from my friend, Ted (Mr. E) and have asked the teachers at my school to create snowmen for a hallway display. I am going to ask the children to guess which teacher made which snowman, and have a prize for the student getting the most answers right. I wasn't sure how many teachers would participate, we have approximately 75 teachers plus staff at our school, but with the holidays, observations, and high stress levels, I only expected maybe 15 snowmen to show up in my mailbox or on my desk. Well, I was totally surprised! As of right now I have 41 snowmen to put up in the hallway, with a few more coming tomorrow. I thought I would give everyone a sneak peek at my snowman, since I think it will be pretty obvious, but once I have the snowmen put up in the hall, I will post pics of the others as well.