School Snack Idea

It's our turn for school lunch this week. We usually do a fruit because most people do a starch like peanut butter crackers and baked chips. While Natalie really likes pb crackers and chips she gets bored with them. In the past I have done strawberries with ff cool whip and mini bananas, ff vanilla pudding, and vanilla wafers. So this time we came up with oranges. Since 1st graders can't usually peel oranges I got that job. If I never have to peel another orange it will be too soon. :) I have to admit even for me I went a little overboard this time around. I made bag toppers for the oranges with a knock knock joke, sewed wet one packs for the wet ones(you can't give kids oranges and not have wet ones can you? I didn't think so). And the thing that put it over the top...when Natalie told me she gets to hand out her treats ...what did I do you ask? Yep, I made her a orange shirt to wear to school and a hair scrunchie on snack day to match her snacks. I told you,,,over the top. But hey, let the other mom's talk about how I must not have a job, etc(BTW, I do have a job)..... I had fun making the stuff and Natalie said she loved it...so yeah! Hope you enjoy the pics and let me know if you have any other ideas for snacks.

Kindergarten Graduation Party

My daughter graduated from Kindergarten this year. After the ceremony I planned a little party for my daughter and her classmates. We set the tables with red tablecloths and put a 12X12 piece of white cardstock down so the plates I created would show up on the tablecloths.

The graduation hat plates were created by placing a square red plate on an upside down red bowl. I glued them together and placed a soup can on the top so it would stick. Once the plates and bowls were glued together I punched a hole in the corner of one the plates using a hand held hole punch and then I created a tassle with white embroidery floss and gold ribbon to tie through the hole in the plate.

I went to the party store and found smiley face pics with graduation hats to use for the cupcakes. I scanned in the yearbook pics and cut the children's faces in circles to use on the pics(NOTE: place these on the cupcakes right before the party so the icing doesn't get on the pics) The kids really enjoyed looking at themselves on the cupcakes.

I also created a centerpiece for the punch table titled "SMARTIES". I took wooden skewers, glue dots, smarties, and ribbon and made smartie pics. On each smartie pic I placed the childrens pics. I also bought a couple of the larger smartie packages for the teachers pics. It turned out really cute. I used a wallpaper tray painted in school colors and floral foam as the base of my Smartie centerpiece.

For the goodie 'bags' I bought to-go containers from Sam's warehouse to hold all the goodies. The goody containers each had a small chalkboard with the child's name written in chalk on the top. They include a small box of chalk, a diploma made out of fruit rollups, white paper, and ribbon, goldfish crackers(adapted this idea from ReneeDezember on 2peas), a button that I made out of paper and ribbon that said I graduated from Kindergarten Today, and a single kool-aid pack that said "Have a Kool Summer".

I also had to make some adorable graduation pops from Bakerella.

I hope you enjoyed these ideas and I hope that you can use some for your next graduation party.

Field Trip Picnic

Natalie's class had their end of year field trip/picnic last week. It was a lot of fun and I was asked a week ahead of time to organize and plan the picnic :). With only a week to spare I thought of ideas that I could make quickly for 43 children and have a big impact. Here is what I came up with in a week's notice: MIDWAY SIGN(in previous post) cut out of boxes, spray painted and put in the ground with sticks and skewers to take pictures in front of and to lead them to the right shelter. Some quick paper banners to decorate the shelter area. Open up a document editor make your letters big and print one on each page. Take you hole punch and string the letters through the holes, tape them on the back so they don't move around on the string. If you want polka dots like mine just use a circle punch or cut them free hand and glue to the sign to customize a bit. The other banner I cut a pendant shape out of and then printed the letters smaller in squares and glued on. It says field trip. I also made straw surrounds for the drinks and put the name of the school on them. They also have their mascot stamped on them. For the napkins I took a white napkin rolled it up and tied it around the red napkin. I figured it would be better to have two napkins then have a ribbon that would be hard to take off for the kindergarten children.

For the food we had pizza, chips, cookies(in cellophane bag tied with ribbon-my dd idea), and mini doughnuts from krispy kreme(Did you know Krispy Kreme had mini doughnuts? They are so cute!!!)

And finally, since the kids were going to the pond after they ate to feed the ducks I packaged a couple pieces of bread for each child to feed the ducks. They were individually labeled: Duck and Geese Food. One trick I have learned this year for kindergarten children they all want identical things. If one gets something they all want it so ziploc baggies have been my friend.

I hope you enjoyed our field trip picnic and hope you can use some of these ideas in your future picnics.