Easter in Kindergarten

   Spring break!!! Yes friends, my spring break started today and I could not be more relieved. This week has been long and exhausting but lots of fun and festive.
  I just wanted to share with y'all a little glimpse into Easter in my kindergarten class...

  These cute bunny bags were for collecting the eggs during our Easter egg hunt. I love that each one is different.

   On Monday the kids used shaving cream and paint to decorate big paper eggs. (directions here)

   At the end of today we had a big 'ole egg hunt. It was exciting, loud, and a bit chaotic. The little ones absolutely adored it. 

   I sent all my students home super hyped up on sugar and with bags of goodies in hand. For the next ten days I'll be home, livin' it up (ie sleeping late and going to the gym). 

Finally making our porch livable

   Now that it's warm and beautiful, I just can't stand being inside. We have a nice little porch on our apartment and I long for it to be an extra living space. Somewhere I can sit and eat breakfast (once school's out), read blogs, sit with Brandon, and just enjoy the warmth of Summer. Until now, our little porch has been far from an enjoyable place. Through the winter it became an extra storage place (our Christmas tree stand still resides there) and through this Spring it's become a haven for spiders and their sparkling webs. When I first moved in after our wedding in June, I tried to beautify it a little, but my heart just wasn't in it and the six-pack of impatiences I bought ended up sitting in their plastic container on the railing until they were nearly dead.
   This year I am determined to make our porch a pleasant place where even Brandon, who hates spiders more than me I think, will want to spend some time.
   I started on my little project today by paying Lowes a visit. Someone please explain to me why people think it's appropriate to bring their dogs there??? I bought some really pretty spray paint for some rocking chairs I recently acquired and lots of plants. I had no idea how expensive plants are! Thankfully, we've been saving a Lowes gift card since getting it for a wedding gift.
   This afternoon I've been busy sweeping, planting, and destroying spider webs. There's progress being made.

   I didn't think our porch looked that bad, but apparently two little birdies though it looked deserted enough to build nests in our rafters. 

   I believe I heard quite a bit of tiny little chirp, chirp, chirps coming from these nest so I suppose they'll be our neighbors for a while. Maybe they'll eat all the spiders :o)

Ginger Ale Peach Tea after a day at the farm

   It's been a great Friday so far and it ain't over yet.  No, it's not because I spent my morning watching the royals get married. Like I said yesterday, we had a field trip today. We and our kinders went to a university farm for the day. I wasn't too excited due to the fact that I'm not really a big fan of animals and I hate when my routine is changed (in any aspect of my life). Sometimes I'm a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. I decided to have a positive attitude though and I enjoyed our trip so, so much. Maybe more than my students :o)

   God blessed us with the most perfect field trip weather. We got to see chickens, pigs, horses, sheep, goats, and to finish the whole trip off...they let our classes pick strawberries from their patch to have with our bag lunches. After lunch we went to a playground and let the kids, run, yell and play.

   When I got home this afternoon I was in desperate need of a refreshing pick-me-up. My mom came across this recipe a while back and it's been my favorite treat to enjoy every afternoon this week.

Ginger Ale Peach Tea

2 cups water
2 cups Ginger Ale or Diet Ginger Ale
1 "tub" Crystal Light Peach Tea (I buy the Target brand and each container holds 6 "tubs")
Stir it all up, chill, and mmmmmm.

   Have a sweet and wonderful Friday evening friends!

Easter eggs

   My hands are style multi colored from egg dying last night. I got into it. And I'm messy. The pink, green, and blue splotches on my hands are more subdued now and I look less freakish than I did last night.
   We had a wonderful time celebrating my mom's birthday and dying our Easter eggs. My brother's home from school for Easter and it was great for us all to get to be together. God has blessed us so.
   Later today we'll be going to visit my grandparents and see my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I've also been told that there's going to be a big competitive Easter egg hunt :o)

   When we got home last night I iced my Easter sugar cookies. I promise I'll share the recipe soon.

Tissue Paper Bunnies and {finally} Spring Break!

  I am so tired, but so excited! I spent the day with 21 children asking me over and over...and over "When's the egg hunt? "Is the egg hunt soon?" "When do we get to look for eggs?" "Are we looking for eggs after math?" "Where are the eggs going to be?" and on and on and on... you get the idea. Needless to say, kids are already excited the last day before break. Throw a giant Easter egg hunt in the mix, and they are out of their minds excited. I love their enthusiasm though and will take their constant excited questions over apathy any day. And I gotta admit, egg hunts make me super excited too. I'm pretty sure I get to participate in one at my grandparents' this weekend. Watch out cousins :o)
   So yes, I'm tired from all the excitement at school and emptying and putting back together like 100 eggs, but super excited because my kids had so much fun and I now have five days or freedom before me. Yes, five whole days of Spring Break! Best of all, my husband has the same five days off. With Brandon and I often working very opposite schedules each week, I have butterflies thinking of all the time we'll be getting to spend together.
  I do wanna share with y'all the little Easter Bunny Craft we did today. It was pretty simple. The kiddos each balled up a piece of tissue paper, put it in the middle of another piece, gathered it around the top like a present, tied a ribbon around the gathers, and added a face.

  They turned out pretty cute and bunny-esq. Too bad I forgot to send them home today but with the pound of candy each kid took in their backpack, they didn't seem to notice their bunnies staring at them as they left. 

   Thank the good Lord for Spring Break :o)

Springtime in Kindergarten

   Two more days 'til Spring break! Well two more school days. After Tuesday I'll have five full days off of work. So, so dang exciting! Over those five days I can do whatever I want during the day, including finishing writing my thank you cards for our wedding gifts....
   In our crazy kindergarten class we've been doing lots of Spring activities. I've been wanting to share them, but I haven't remembered to take pictures of our fun stuff 'til today.

 

   I wish I could take credit for coming up with this idea but I found it on the internet.

   Cupcake liners make such cute flowers. Tissue paper and pompoms make them every better.

   We also planted Zinnia seeds. Each day we've predicted when we think they'll finally start growing, no luck yet.

   I so hope we'll have some luck with the seeds....if not at least planting them was a good learning experience :o)

What I DO like about Spring

   Well here it is, the first post since Sunday. Where have I been? I really dunno. Just around. Eating sleeping, teaching, and going to the gym. Dullness and lack of creativity results in not much to blog about. Tonight I have returned, though I have no crafts or crazy excitement to share. Sometimes it's nice to just share a little piece of life :o)
   I think I've mentioned more than once that I'm not a big fan of Spring. Perhaps it's different in other parts of the country, but in NC the constant switch between cold and hot is an annoying tease. One aspect of spring I do, however, loooove is flowers. Nothing makes a home feel fresher, prettier, and more lovely than fresh flowers. This evening after a short run, I might have nabbed some from the nearby park.
   Aren't they beautiful? I saw these when I went for a walk this weekend and vowed that I'd come back for them.

   And while I was reaching for the lovely pink beauties (they're from a tree), I noticed bushes of beautiful white flowers.

   No more dead plants in our kitchen or bathroom. 

   Only bright, happy, springtime flowers.

Spring Embroidery Hoop

  I wish it were warmer today. For one thing because I love warm weather, but more importantly because today I am forced to sit outside our apartment clubhouse to use the internet. Our modem broke. I was on the internet yesterday and five minutes later it was broken. Oh the joys of technology. No modem means no blogging, no email, no weather forecast, no Netflix, and racking our brains to remember what we did before the internet took over.  Last night we went to Barnes & Noble to hang out, read books and magazines, and use the internet. Now, I need the internet for some school related stuff. So, here I am at an outdoor table, on the clubhouse deck, squinting at the screen and trying to ignore my numb fingers. If it were warmer I'd be thoroughly enjoying this, but today I am enduring. I predict a mug of hot Chai tea is in my very near future.
  So on this lovely but cool Sunday, I must share with y'all the other embroidery hoop I embellished. At first it looked like a big mess, but after some TLC it's much improved.

   It's a very happy and cheerful embroidery hoop.

   Though I claim to hate Spring, I'm working on being thankful and it is exciting watching all the new leaves growing, ducklings hatching, flowers blooming, and the days getting longer.

And after all, with Spring here, Summer can't be far off.

Happy Sunday friends and happy Spring!

Spring has {finally} made it to our front door

   It's been a rough Monday. It started out super cold and gloomy and then, as my kindergartners were eating breakfast, it began SNOWING. This is what I hate about Spring. Teasingly warm one day and frigid the next. Then my kids were just off today. Perhaps it was the weather or maybe the massive amount of sugar in their breakfast this morning. I don't know. Finally, once I got home I began working on school stuff for a few hours until I could take no more. I'm learning that sometimes I just have to put my work down and enjoy life a little. I enjoy crafting. So I saved all the report cards and Personal Education Plans I was toiling over, set down my laptop, and had some fun.

I've been infatuated by these ever since I laid eyes upon them Friday.

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but....we've had our Valentine's wreath on our apartment door until today. I couldn't take it anymore.

My flowers are a bit different from the inspirations flowers. 

Now, instead of a lone heart, we have spring flowers to greet us each day.