A Year of Crafts in One Basket! Fundraiser or Gift Idea

Oh my gosh... Excitement alert!! Every year, my cousin's school does an AWESOME fundraiser for their special education program. The fundraiser event includes a silent auction and I've donated a few baskets in the past. This year, I am IN LOVE with my basket idea. I put together a basket of craft supplies with instructions to make the various crafts. The basket includes a craft for every month of the year and ALLLLL of the supplies needed to make each craft!

To create this basket, I took to Pinterest and found a fun, simple craft for each month of the year. I came across some TRULY FABULOUS blogs an consolidated their craft instructions into a simple document. I want to be clear.... These crafts were NOT created or developed by me! Below, you will find links to all of the blogs that I collected the ideas from. Grab the directions for the crafts by clicking this link: A Year of Crafts Directions.

Here's a preview of the directions with links to the original blog posts below:

January Stained Glass Mittens from Kinder-Craze
February Yarn Hearts from Family Chic Blog
March Handprint Rainbows from 123 Homeschool 4 Me

April Raindrop Suncatchers from Pre-K Pages
May Ladybug from I Heart Craft Things
June Hyper Colorful Paper Plate Flowers from Pink Stripey Socks

 July Painting Fireworks from Happiness is Homemade Blog
August Paper Plate Butterfly from The Rambling of a Crazy Woman
September Paper Plate Dragon Puppet from Learn with Play at Home Blog

October Popsicle Stick Monsters from I Heart Arts n Crafts Blog

October Paper Plate Spiders from I Heart Crafty Things Blog

November Turkey Doily from I Heart Crafty Things Blog

December Snowflake Ornaments from The Chaos and the Clutter Blog

Now, when I first set out to create this basket, it was rather daunting... I had to find the crafts, make the list of supplies, consolidate all of the directions, shop for the materials, and assemble the basket. 

This blog post helps you to create your own basket WITHOUT all of the prep work! All you need to do is SHOP for the materials and ASSEMBLE the basket! Simply print all of the craft instructions from this blog post, here.

I also wanted to make the shopping process a little bit simpler for you! Here is a link to a shopping list and suggestions of where to find the materials! In total, this basket cost me about $100.00 to put together.

This basket is PERFECT for fundraisers and birthday kids for young kids!! I even included a list of books that could be read before or after creating each project. (this is included in the Craft Directions)

I hope that you found this blog post and idea helpful! I can't wait to donate this basket to our fundraiser in April! 

Spring has Sprung!!

I am very happily writing to you from my spring break Monday morning. Nothing better than your first morning of not setting an alarm. Pure bliss!!

Spring has arrived in our classroom and I'm currently in the works of prepping more spring activities for when we return from spring break!

RAINBOW SIMILES

Last week, I tried out a new craft and writing activity from Teacher by the Beach and I LOVED it!! Her FREE activity can be found on her blog... click this link to view her post!

Here's her photo of the finished product! Apparently, I forgot to take a photo after I hung ours in the hallway.

We wrote Rainbow Similes and made some rainbow artwork to go with our writing!

We began by brainstorming things for each color of the rainbow. It was a perfect chance for us to use the "pair and share" method of sharing ideas with a partner before sharing with the whole group. Here is a peek at our brainstorm... please excuse my disgusting, smudgy whiteboard!

Then, I added to Teacher by the Beach's idea by creating a "planning page" for my students to write their similes on. I have many students in reading/writing intervention this year, so I knew that they would need a little more guidance to create their similes.

Here's a photo of one of my adorable firsties making his final copy! Students traced over their writing with a Sharpie, which was very exciting for them and make the writing look crisp and clean!

After finishing our writing, students made rainbow artwork.

Such a fun activity! Now our hallway looks so bright and cheery!

APRIL WRITING AND PHONICS PRINTABLES

Click the photo or this link to see this in my TpT store.

This past weekend, I created by second set of Writing and Phonics Printables... now ready for APRIL! I wrote about this idea in my March post, but I created these simple monthly printables as take-home activities for my first grade students who are in need of writing intervention. I had a solid group of about 5 students who came into first grade reading below grade level. They are making great gains in reading so now I'm focusing more on their writing and phonics/spelling skills. I have a fabulous group of parents this year who want additional resources for their children to work on at home. I've received great feedback from those parents after completing similar resources for the month of March... so here we go... ready for the month of April.

Now, that being said, these could easily be used in the classroom as well!

Here's a look at some of the activities included in the pack. Click this link to download 5 of these printables for FREE!

A FREEBIE and A STEAL!

Finally, I have a few Easter/Spring math activities up my sleeve. The first one is a freebie!! Grab this fun Easter Math Sort from my TpT store! Can't wait to work this into my math workshop centers!

Finally, the steal! Grab this Spring Mini Math Book for only $1.00!!! Skills include name collection boxes, missing number subtraction, adding/subtracting 10s, What's My Rule? (function machines), fact families, and telling time to 5 minute increments.

Well, that's what I have for my spring activities! Can't wait to check out TpT for other activities I can grab for next week!