The "Peg Game" (and all its wonderful benefits)

One thing I love about working with one-year-olds is that everything can be a multi-level learning experience.  One of my favorite activities to do with my students involves an empty Poland Spring jug -- and whatever can fit into the opening of said Poland Spring jug.  The rules are simple: find things that fit into the jug and put them into the jug.  Then stand back when teachers turn the jug over to empty its contents. 

I love this game for a multitude of reasons:
1) It's the best redirection when the kids are going insane, if only because they are immediately attracted to the sound of falling pegs.
2) This is a game made out of recycled and miscellaneous items. Nothing needed to be purchased. And we all know how much administration loves it when you find ways to not spend money
3) While every activity involves learning on many levels, this activity is a smugisboard of learning and development.
 
This is the write-up I have up on my wall in my classroom, along with the (non-blurred) pictures:
 
 

The Peg Game

In “The Peg Game”, children find various items that would fit into the opening of an upside down Poland Spring jug (wooden pegs, hair rollers, plastic building pegs) and drop them into the jug.  When all of the items are dropped into the jug, the teacher turns the jug over and empties it out.  This game helps further our students’ development in a multitude of areas.  While playing the game, the children’s fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination are developed as they pick up the toys and drop them into the narrow opening.  Children also learn turn-taking and sharing, as only one child can put a peg into the bucket at a time (and the bucket is to be used by every child).  While children are playing, they are also practicing their clean-up skills as the students have to find toys on the floor, pick them up, and “put them away” into the jug.  Children are also exposed shape recognition, as well as size differences, as certain objects will or will not fit into the jug based on their size, shape, or both.  Children are also gaining pre-mathematical and problem solving skills as they learn which objects will fit into the jug, and which ones won’t.  Children also gain problem solving skills when the jug is filled with pegs: the children cannot reach down to grab the pegs out of the jug.  The jug must instead be turned over for the pegs to fall out.

Painter's Tape Tube and Ribbon Bangle

The school I teach at uses painter's tape to hang up pictures. The school loves it because it's cheap and it doesn't harm the paint on the walls. Teachers find it frustrating because the adhesive isn't strong enough for anything other than thin computer paper. However, one really nice thing is that, when you hit the end of the roll, you are given a nice, clean cardboard tube. Instead of throwing the most recent tube out, I decided to use some of my ribbon left over from my wedding (remember that part where I said I'd leave all that stuff alone? Yeah, I lied.) and make a bangle.

The supplies are simple enough: an empty tape tube, ribbon, and a hot glue gun.

I started with a healthy dab of hot glue on the inside of the tube. Never mind the shoddy state of my hot glue gun. The soot never came off from a botched melted spoon rose, but that's for another time.

Given that I wanted my ribbon to wrap diagonally, I glued the ribbon on at a angle, careful to keep everything contained within the inner edges of the tube.

I wrapped around the tube, careful to keep the slack very tight. I would glue the ribbon into place each time it went around the inner section of the tube.

After I wrapped the tube completely in blue ribbon, I decided to accent it with ruby red ribbon. I thought of making two red lines on opposite ends, but made a last-minute decision and placed the red lines side by side instead. Like the blue ribbon, I keep the slack incredibly tight and glued each layer with a dab of hot glue on the inside of the tube.


I feel like this would be a good Girl Scout's craft to do. Definitely something I would never be able to do with my Pre-K students -- and definitely not now, with my toddler students. At least not with hot glue.

Photo Friday: Springtime in Nashua (Finally)

Fun fact about New England: when spring arrives, the weather from Original England comes over and spends about 2 1/2 months hanging out with us. This means we're lucky if we get about 2 weeks of nice weather total before summer kicks in.

We lucked out last weekend and had positively perfect weather. I decided it was time to dust off my DSLR and take a few shots around the neighborhood.

Try it Tuesday: Sit-Ups as a Hairdryer

My work-out area is also my living room area. Also, where every possible wedding frame/picture is located.
It takes a tremendous about of willpower to go to the gym. And I have to admit: I have to cheat my mind into exercising. From biking to work to using weights while watching my favorite trash TV (which makes watching trash TV perfectly okay, then), everything is downright snuck in.

This works for anyone whose hair can dry naturally without disastrous results. Every time I wash my hair, I do 75 sit-ups on my pilates ball before (or instead of) using a hairdryer. I do all the usual stuff that I would do prior to a hairdryer: I brush out any snarls, perhaps rub in some mousse. And then, like Willow Smith, I whip my hair back and forth, I whip my hair back and forth.

This won't make my hair completely dry, but it does dry it enough and it's a wonderful excuse to get a little bit of a workout in.

And, in my defense, the giant canvas painting was a gift!

Glass Etched Baby Jar Organizers

This is what happens when you get a surplus of baby food jars and you're itching to do some etching.

For this project, I got: baby food jars, contact paper, exacto knife, and (border-free) letter stickers.

First, I spelled out the various things each jar would be for with the stickers. The only drawback to this was that I didn't have the foresight to check the stickers for borders. This meant I spent an hour cutting around the clear borders. And even then, I would have to settle for blocky letters. Eh, live and learn (and check stickers for clear borders).

Much like my coasters, I taped a 6" x 6" piece of contact paper onto my cutting board. Then, for lack of better phrasing, I drew a splotch on contact paper. I kept the jars nearby so I'd know how big to make my splotch.

And then -- I etched! I used a plastic bag to keep the jars still as I slabbed on the etching creme.

While the etching cream was etching, I worked on the second set. Thankfully, with these jars, I found stickers that had no clear boundaries.



I'm in love with these jars. They're compact, they keep everything organized, and they were a lovely excuse to pull out my etching cream again. Now -- what else can I etch?

RSVP Paper Rose Wall Decoration

Now, this project is not for the weak of heart, the stingy of hot glue, or the newlyweds who are still manic about every wedding-related item. You have been forewarned.

With my one-year anniversary fast approaching, I find myself thinking more and more about my wedding. This inevitably lead to me going through some of the extra wedding items. The things that didn't turn into utensil holders and sun catchers got stashed in boxes and placed in our second bedroom/crafts room/library.

One of the boxes holds all the extra invites and RSVP cards, while another holds all the returned RSVP cards. And they just kind of hang out there -- and have been for almost a year. I decided that, instead of letting them be shelved away in a box, collecting dust, I'd do something with them.

This project can easily be done with regular paper, cardstock, or pages from a book (some of my favorite "paper flowers" projects call for book pages). I decided, for a slew of reasons to use old RSVP cards.

For this project, I got out: the big box of RSVP cards, cardboard, a jar lid, a large circle puncher, glue gun, "swizzle stick" (technically an unused wooden chopstick), glass marbles, yarn, push pins, rose beads.

First, I traced 18 circles in the cardboard to serve as the bases of the flowers. Yes, 18 circles. You can do however many you want. Maybe you just want to do one flower. In fact, one or two flowers would look adorable. I know I wish I only did one by about, say, flower #12.

I then used my circular puncher and punched out the circles. Lots, and lots, and lots of circles. Since my RSVP cards had this really nice border on the edge, I paid close attention to said edges to make sure I got them when punching out my circles.

To give you an idea as to how many circles you'll punch out: each flower uses about 13-15 circles. 18 x 15 = 270. This is why I recommend a circle punch instead of manually tracing and cutting out circles. You will drive yourself mad.

Now, to my newly-married, if you're ready, I want you to repeat this mantra: not every detail of the wedding needs to be inshrined. Again: not every detail of the wedding needs to be inshrined. I say this because my husband saw my project and noted that he'd never thought he'd see the day where I would willingly cut up RSVP cards.

And like the calm, rational woman that I am, I reacted by doubting everything I was doing and bursting into tears.

After I calmed down, I immediately remembered why I'm so glad I'm good and married and done with the wedding planning process: wedding plans can take all types of girls, even girls like me -- girls who never really "envisioned" their wedding, or really even had "get married" as a goal in life -- and turns them into overly-emotional wrecks who need to be coddled like a nineteenth century woman suffering from hysteria.

Something to remember when I find myself waxing poetic about the joys of venue hunting.

Next I tightly wrapped each circle around the unused chopstick that I relabeled swizzle stick. I slid the circle off and placed to the side.

Either flower will need about 3 or 4 "center" circles. These circles will need to be cut in order to fit in the center. I simply cut two sides into an un-swizzled circle so that it looks a bit like an ice cream cone. Then, I swizzled away.

Starting with the outer layer of the cardboard circle, I hot glued 5 or 6 of the swizzled circles. Once the glue has cooled, I glued roughly 4 or 5 circles in the inner layer, and 3 or 4 ice cream cones/"center circles".

Place a solid dollop of hot glue in the center and place your glass marble. I went for the jagged glass rocks, partly because they didn't have any flat, clear marbles at Michael's, and partly because I liked the idea of having the center be multi-colored (and by "multi-colored", I mean a duo of the two non-colors: black and white).

If you are like me, after you made your 18 flowers: just hang out. Watch some TV. Go running. I spent about 2 hours making these flowers. Granted, it was on the weekend after an exceptionally stressful week (although, sometimes it feels like every week is an exceptionally stressful week), and I needed that monotonous behavior to reset my weary brain. But that didn't change the fact that I was seeing stars by the end.

The next day, I went at the next portion: the hanging portion! This is where the yarn, push pins, and rose beads came in.

I got these amazing black rose beads from Natalia's Beads & Crafts. I only needed five and they came in a set of six. Since I'm always making jewelry, I decided to save the sixth one for a future project.

I first arranged the flowers how I would want them hanging out, only face-down. I wanted five rows, with alternating four flowers, three flowers in each. Make sure the flowers are the right distances away from their row companions.

Next, I cut five very long strands of black yarn and placed them on top of the flowers. To hot glue them in place, I moved the string to the side, placed a healthy dollop of hot glue in the center, and, holding the string taught, I gently pushed the string down on the dollop, twisting it just enough to that the glue covered the entire string.

Afterward, I decided one dollop wasn't enough. I then made a criss-cross over the string, as well as a loop on either end of the flower.

After every flower was glued onto the string, I hot glued the beads onto the tops of the push pins. I lucked out in that the beads had flat bottoms (heh, flat bottoms) and I could place the beads face down. This made the gluing immensely easy. I placed a dollop of glue on the bottoms of the beads and simultaneously pressed and twisted the tops of the push pins into the glue.

When everything cooled, I evened out the yarn lengths and tied the ends of the yarn to the body of the push pin. I suggest multiple wrappings and knottings, so that you cannot see the color of the push pin.

Then, I simply pressed the push pins into the wall roughly 6 inches from each other and twisted around the yarn to that every rose is facing out (they won't naturally want to this).

This was a long, arduous journey, but I'm happy with the result. However, I think I'm going to let the rest of my excess wedding paraphernalia hang out in said boxes. It's not worth awakening the beast that is the overly-sensitive bride-to-be!

Writer's Wednesday: The Underestimated World of E-Publishing

Whenever I get into discussions with fellow writers, we always land on one main topic of conversation: the publishing world is more unforgiving to new writers than ever before. I remember pulling my hair out during my agency hunt: at least half of the agencies I researched either stopped accepting all queries or were only accepting queries by established authors (or writers recommended by established authors). Some even stated outright that they had no interest in writers that had not been previously published (and, apparently, being published a handful of times in your university's literary magazine means nada in the real world).

It's a vicious cycle: they don't want to represent you unless you already have an audience, but you can't garner an audience when you work hasn't even been published yet.

The idea of self-publishing has always been in the back of my mind. However, being extremely behind on the times, I have always lumped the concept in with vanity publishing. Even when I looked into POD self-publishing (Print-on-Demand, or, if you're a child of the 90s, the best Christian alt-rock band ever), I felt like it was giving up somehow, throwing all my hard work away in the name of selling a few copies to my friends and family.

However, one thing I forgot was, with the advent of Web 2.0, there are more opportunities to those in the arts than ever before. Singers who were passed up by every major record label in town can cultivate their own fanbase with a little help from Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, and, for a period of time, Myspace Music. Photographers and painters can sell prints thanks to numerous online art communities. The concept of self promotion is no longer limited to the guy on the sidewalk, fruitlessly passing out flyers for his band. Although the medium is still on a smaller scale, the power is in the artists' hands. And that power can be just what you need to get your foot in the door.

Take two of my recently-enjoyed books: Still Alice by Lisa Genova, and The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Both authors had similar journeys to publishing success: both queried countless agencies, both were unanimously rejected, and both decided to simply self-publish. They cultivated a fan base on their own and, when word of their success made its way to the "legitimate" publishing world, agencies that flat-out rejected them ended up contacting them about representation.

It really is easy to look at the success of Twilight series and get frustrated. I won't even get into the books' extreme lack of merit (any type of merit); the simple fact that Stephanie Meyer had an agent by Query #15 and a book deal before the book could've been properly edited (at least, that's my guess) is frustrating to writers -- if only because we want that success. We don't want to be like Stephen King, sending out 200+ queries until getting even a short story published. We want to be the special ones who have agencies lined up by their door.

But the publishing industry doesn't work like that. Stephanie Meyer is literally one in a billion. Maybe six other authors in all of the current publishing market have had that luck. And even in better economic times, times when people read more frequently, people did not achieve representation/a book deal that quickly. And now, more than ever, you have to already have a fanbase before anyone will even look at you.

I have already starting my (hopefully) last round of editing, polishing Manuscript #1 until it is absolute perfection. After that, I'll be collaborating with my sister-in-law to make an eye-catching cover (a bit of advice I got from a fellow writer: when designing your own book cover, make sure it looks eye-catching in thumbnail size. When people are scanning the digital shelves of Amazon or B&N.com, that's all they're going to see!), with the goal being self-publishing it as an e-book/POD by the fall. It's already copyrighted (an act I urge all writers to do. It's super quick, it only costs $30, and it covers your ass) and I already own software that turns Word documents into e-book files. After that, it's all about finding the best platform, putting it out there, and promoting shamelessly (which, given how I can be with this blog, is something I already have experience with).

If you are curious about the wonderful world of e-publishing, I suggest reading this and this great article. The only caveat I give is that, since the world of e-publishing is constantly changing, both articles are already outdated!

Stupidly Simple Circle Shirt

I've always wanted to get into clothing making, but my extreme lack of experience has hindered me a bit. Thankfully, I found this incredibly easy design via Pinterest.

All I needed was a yard of fabric, scissors, and various sewing paraphernalia (sewing machine and pins, to be specific).

The website I got this from suggests a jersey knit. I made a beeline to the "dance and swimwear" section of JoAnne fabrics and found a nice, stretchy cloth. Basically, if it won't fray when you cut it, you're in the clear. But cloth with nylon in it with make it more comfortable to wear.

I folded the shirt in half the long way (so that, I'd have half a yard hanging from my shoulders) and pinned the corners into place. Or, should I say, it was time to PITS.

I then made circular cuts around one corner opposite of the fold. To keep the shirt looking symmetrical, I folded the shirt in half and cut around the edge of the first cut.

To make the collar, I took one of my favorite shirts and placed it in the middle of the fabric, up against the fold. For the back portion of the collar, I simply cut both ends of the fold along the edge of my actual shirt. I then placed the shirt to one side and cut the front portion of the collar in the same style as the actual shirt.

Now, as you can see, my actual shirt's collar is very deep. What I forgot is that the "actual shirt" has zero give to it. This nylon blend? Lots of give. I tried on the fabric to see how the neck hole turned out, only to end up giving a free show to my cats. Instead of panicking, I moved forward with the project, all the while playing out how I'll fix this gaping hole for a collar.

The next step was to sew up the sides. I decided to use the same shirt as a reference. Giving myself an inch on each side, I pinned up the shirt, stopping about half a foot before the fold. Much like the original creator of this shirt, I made my lines curvy instead of straight and parallel.

And then, I sewed, paying close attention to stop sewing once I ran out of pins.

The nice thing is that the shirt is tight enough that the horrendously deep dip in the collar turned into a nearly-off-the-shoulder shirt. Pair it with a long, busy necklace, and I'm ready to terrorize teenagers at the mall. Although I'm not exactly sure know why I'd do that.

Photo Friday: A War of Roses

Well, to be precise, a war of tulips.

I love purchasing flowers for our living room. I mean, it's hard not to impulsive-buy a pretty bouquet when they're front and center at Trader Joe's. After cleaning up the recent batch to inevitably meet its maker, I noticed that one of the tulips had completely let go of its pedals. So I decided to snap this photo before cleaning everything off.

Try it Tuesday: Sort It like Victoria's Secret

I've amassed a pretty big collection of bras over the years. The problem? The nightstand where I keep all my undergarments has not grown, which quickly resulted in bras getting smushed into the bottom drawer -- which resulted in bras that were literally bent out of shape.

My latest trip to Vicky's inspired me to reorganize my drawer. Why not arrange them single file like they do in the store? They take up less space, they keep their shape, and I can actually see what bras I have available. All sports bras were placed in the free space between the bra and the other end of the drawer.

Also, if you look closely, you can see my t-shirt shag carpet. Still enjoy wiggling my toes into it every time I wake up =)