Spring Break Begins- Day 1

It seems like it has been forever since I blogged.  I have been super busy.  This week is Spring Break.  The kids are going to a music camp and I'm crafting like a mad woman!

My little art class that I teach on Fridays to K-2nd graders had a lot of supply money leftover so I've decided to have fun these last few weeks. We are not allowed to keep the money for ourselves. So I decided we will make these magnetic calendars out of cookie sheets.  I got the idea several years ago and I even made myself a Christmas Advent calendar.  So this is one that can be used all year round as a regular calendar or an advent calendar.  I needed an example so I let Ashley make it. I of course helped her quite a bit.  But she picked out the papers and the doodads and arranged them the way she wanted them. And she painted the sides of the cookie sheet.  We will probably do this craft in 4 weeks in my class.  I think I have everything bought for it.  Each person's will be different.  I'll let them pick out all the stuff.  I'll have to prepare the cookie sheets for them since I think they are a bit too young to do it themselves.

Ashley's friend is having a birthday party Sunday and Ash wanted to make one for her too.  I made a "happy" mistake.  I accidentally glued everything to the wrong side.  But I think I actually like it better that way and will probably do the art class that way as well.  With her friend's calendar, Ashley chose all animals since her friend likes animals.  We printed several animals off the internet and laminated them. We are not completely finished with it, but here's how it looks so far:

The cats have been less than useful! I have one kitten who will, I think, intentionally step in paint every time we have it out.  Now sometimes she gets her little paws on our project, but most of the time she just leaves footprints on my Kitchen floor.  Anyway, it has been quite difficult with them getting in the way.  But here is a time they weren't in the way and we had to capture the cuteness of Izzy in the box.

3 weeks from now I'll have the kids in my art class decorate their own bag.  I'll keep them for the following week so they can take their calendar home in them.  But again for practice I had Ashley create one for herself.  As with hers, I will put everyone's name on their bag.  I'll let them choose the fabric they want for their names and I'll use my Cricut to cut out the letters and I'll iron them on the bags.
Here is what Ashley created:

Oh wow, I'm so tired and I haven't even shown you what I'm super excited about!  I'm going to put it in its own post.