Christmas Wrap Up

I am not sure if anyone still reads this since I doing a horrible job updating but I am going to keep blogging away anyway.  I wanted to post some pics of our parent gift and my gift to my students.  I found them both on-- you guessed it-- Pinterest.  I think they came out great and couldn't be happier!  First we made this manager scene with the kids hand and thumb print.

I got the wood hearts from Michaels and painted them blue before the kids began their crafting. 

My aide and I found it was easiest to do the paint the kids hands in in brown, have them wash them and then move on to the next step.  We used acrylic paint which dries fast and allowed us to move fairly quickly.  

Our 4th grade buddies joined us for a wrapping party and helped us make the gifts look extra special.

I had the kids wrap their gifts in tissue paper, decorate them with yarn and Christmas stickers. 

     It was so cute to see the care they took to wrap their gifts and choose their stickers.  

One sweet boy (not the pictured) requested a bow and placed it proudly on the bottom of his package stood back and smiled.  None of us had the heart to tell him it would probably fall off.  I loved this gift so much I made one for my in-laws with my little mans hand.

     I normally give my students a book from Scholastic for Christmas, but this year I couldn't find one I liked.  This worked out perfectly since I had found this on and had planned to use to make them as our parent gift till I saw the project above.  I decided to make them for each kid and give them as their gift.  I am still not sure if they appreciated them and think they may have enjoyed a book more but hope that as they get older will appreciate it.  Unfortunately I can't find the pin for the original post but if someone has it please leave a comment and I will update.  For this project I just took each child's profile picture, cut out their heads, which I threw away and taped the outline to large flat ornaments I found at Michaels.  I attempted to make it just like the blog post suggests but found it too hard.  So mine where on clear ornaments.  Then I just filled in the profile with black acrylic paint.  I went over each child's small small features with a tooth pick as soon as I remove the paper outline.  My assistant wrote each kids name and the year on the other side in fancy shmancy handwriting like only she can.  Lastly we just put a thin layer over the paint and tied some cord make a hanger.  It was a little nerve wracking the night before our last day as I painted 21 kids faces but oh so worth it!  Sorry I don't have more pictures but as I said I was rushing and this was the only picture I snapped.

Lastly for this never ending post I wanted to share another Christmas project I made with my little Pie that is so cute!  I don't think it would work with firsties but definitely worth doing with your own little ones.  We decided to keep this one and not give it as originally planned.  I found this on Pinterest as well :)