Parent Presents, PART TWO

HI, Friends!! It's Erin, from Very Perry Classroom again!
 Last year, I shared what we made in my classroom for our parent presents from students.. Since I am teaching first grade right now, and have many of the same students this year as last year,  I needed to make something different. A lot has been going on, and I started to worry that we weren't going to finish our presents (or even DECIDE on what to make) in time! Then, I went to Michael's.... Which is dangerous for any crafty teacher in December, but, lo and behold, there was a SALE! :)
I found packs of six of this style of ornament for 50% off....

(P.S. I wish I had seen this one before! What a cute idea!)

SO, I snatched up 3 packs for my 18 students... And the wheels started turning.... What solidified my idea was running into one of my former elementary school teachers... I don't know how many of you went to school in the 80's and 90's but one of my favorite crafts were light bulb ornaments... I brought the lightbulb reindeer ornament back in my class this week!

The first step was to have students write their names along the side of the "seam" of the ornament with a paint pen (I used Sharpie brand).

Next, we needed to coat the inside of the bulb with brown paint... Here was where we ran into our first problem (ha, it's real life!). I was OUT of brown paint! With a quick search online, I found that I could MAKE brown paint with a lot of orange and a little bit of blue. I told the kiddos they would be mixing paint to see what color it would make. I had to unscrew the top, squirt a little paint inside and then seal the hole at the top of the "base." Students had fun shaking their ornaments until they turned completely brown. Students then brought the ornament to me, I unscrewed the lid, and turned the ornament (carefully) upside-down into a cup.

**NOTE: you do NOT need a lot of paint for this. If there is too much paint inside, it will make it much more difficult to "drain," and will get "sloshy."**

Once the paint was fully dry (about 3 hours), I screwed the lids back onto the bulbs, and cleaned the outside up a bit with a wet rag. I then called students back to craft glue googly eyes and pom poms on for the reindeer faces. I let them pick the size of the eyes and where to glue the parts on.

Finally, when the glue was dry, I had the students bend their pipe cleaner antlers (half the length of one pipe cleaner) and I hot-glued them on. Students then picked their ribbon, and, voila! They were done! 

We will be wrapping out reindeer ornaments this week, and adding a hand-written card for their parents. 

I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season! I can't believe it's already December!