Spring has SPRUNG Bunny Craft

My pattern for this adorable spring bunny with accordion legs is available in my TPT Store!



Click here for the pattern, or scroll through my TPT store's widget near my blog banner.

The pieces for this cute medium sized bunny can be printed onto construction paper, cut apart and assembled by your students OR you can cut out construction paper using the measurements provided for more of an assembly-only activity. Cutting instructions include cutting off corners to make edge rounder/curved and cutting oval, circle, or triangle shapes from a simple square, which you can easily model to students.

I've included measurements for a LARGE bunny as well (or you can enlarge the printable template as large as you'd like)- it's almost as tall as a kindergartner!

Construction paper color combos I used with my students include:

white bunny, tan details, pink nose, black marker/crayon eyes
black bunny, light blue details, pink nose, white crayon eyes
tan bunny, pink details, pink nose, black marker/crayon eyes

I imagine solid colored bunnies with patterned scrapbook paper would also look darling!




Let me know if you decide to make these cute bunnies- I'd love to see them!

~Michaele~

P.S. It seems my egg shaped bunny ALWAYS gets pinned each spring- remember this one?

Brown Eggs

Coloring eggs is a favorite activity of kindergartners.

Have you ever dyed ~brown~ eggs?

The deep burgundy and forest green eggs below started as brown eggs.  They were dipped into regular red and green Easter egg dye.

While my Stars prefer the cotton candy colors, I love how the brown eggs turned out!

Spring Chick Art

Maybe she's born with it... maybe it's Maybelline:

Ha!

It's All About the Ears

 Attending to instruction, focusing on details, intentionally remembering steps and working with others are skills that we can help our students develop over time with lots of practice.

I haven't met a student yet who didn't like making bunny ears:

You'll need...

White construction paper:

 3 X 18 for the head band (plus extra strips to staple to the ends to accommodate larger heads)

3 X 9 for each ear

Pink construction paper:

2 X 8 for each ear

1 X 1 to be cut diagonally for a triangle nose

Black construction paper:

1 X 3 (my kiddos folded this piece in half 

to cut out two eyes at once)

Light tan construction paper:

3 X 3 to cut into whiskers

Though cute for spring and Easter, I used this activity to help my Stars develop their memory skills.  After explaining that we'd be using our "remember-ers" (a term used by a former student), I showed and described each piece of paper to be used, and talked myself through making my own bunny headband as students watched.  Reminding them that they'd need scissors and glue, I then sent them to their desks to see if they could make their own headbands.

"My remember-er is working!"

"Mine isn't."

"Here, I'll let you use mine."

*****

SuperMom strikes again!  Cake rolls, bunny Peeps, mini-pretzels and Junior Mints made the cutest little rabbit-racers:

Happy Easter!

Tutorial Tuesday: Bunny Crafts

Here's a quick list of link-ups to super cute bunny crafts:

Cardboard Tube Bunny Family at Crafts by Amanda

Bunny Ears Tutorial by East Coast Mommy

Envelope Bunnies by Martha Stewart

Bunny Windsock Craft by Mommyapolis

A painted bunny art lesson over at Deep Space Sparkle

... and a link to one of my previous blog posts with measurement details for egg-shaped bunnies!

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Make sure to take a look at each site's other sweet spring crafts too!

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Habby Eeser!

Thanks to our fabulous families, my Super Stars enjoyed coloring eggs before they left for their three-day Easter weekend.

Eau de Vinegar and Hard Boiled Eggs was our aroma for the day, and little fingers remained blue, pink, and green at the tips no matter how much they were washed and scrubbed.  Such is the life of a kindergartner.

The life of a kindergarten ~teacher~ includes one of repeated germ exposure, so guess what *I* have for Easter?

A spring cold.

Yep, I hab a code in my doze.  Sudafed, ibuprofin, and lots of fluids fill my Easter basket this year, and unless my voice returns, I may need to request a sub for tomorrow.  NOT the best day to be absent, but also not a good day to try to go to work voiceless with a head full of gunk.  Kindergartners + Easter candy + Monday requires SUPER TEACHER, and at this point, I'm a cape, tights, and a few super powers short.

Ah, sub guilt.  When do you feel it?

New Teachers, In Case Your Ed. Classes Didn't Tell You...

... wiggle eyes make everything better:








Here's the rough template for the bunnies that I shared last year.

"Wiggle" eyes come in fun shapes, sizes and colors, just check your local craft store, look online, or search them out in teacher and/or craft catalogs.

Hoppy, er, HAPPY Easter!

Easter and Spring Crafty Links

Easter is next week, so here are the links to some of my past bunny projects:

Bunny Buddies (using footprint tracings to make bunnies):


Egg-Shaped Bunnies...



...as well as my post on Egg-Ceptional Egg tracing:



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Let's not forget links from other great sources in BlogLand:

~ Make and Takes recycles frosting containers to make bunny buckets (she planted wheatgrass in one here)...

~ Petite Planet shares a tutorial on how to make boo-boo bunnies...

~ Green Lily offers printable templates for very cute bunny and chick paper bag decorations (though students would probably love to use scrap paper and cut the bunny and chick details freehand while at their art or fine motor center)...

... and next to eating Peeps, making a cute Peeps Bunny Bunting (inedible) seems like a fun way to celebrate spring!


(photo, idea, tutorial and creativity all by Dana at Made)

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Weekly Wrap Up... Spring Break Here I Come!

Spring Break, Day Two.

I'm finally sitting down at the computer desk, visiting BlogLand, ever-so-slightly overwhelmed by the seven~ hundred~plus posts I've found cached in NetNews. Pardon me while I hit the "clear-all-as-read" button (shh, don't tell!) so that I can bypass non-reader's guilt and get back into my blogging groove.

I fibbed. I read...some of them.

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Last week at school was a busy one, as any teacher struck with spring-break-fever will tell you. We made bunny baskets:



We learned about gravity with some help from our friend (and several of his relatives) Humpty Dumpty:





(Uh oh, one seems to suspect that something about this visit to our classroom is not-quite-right!)

Here I am, introducing the victim, er, main character:





*Cough* I may or may not have stood on furniture to vary the height for our multiple egg drops (Hey, kindergartners want to know: does gravity still work when you stand on a chair? How about when you stand on a table?). Never fear, we then discussed how gravity is still working no matter my height, because its invisible force is keeping me stuck to the table top, while the table is stuck to the floor, while the floor of the classroom is still stuck to the ground outside!



It was quite the Oh no, Mr. Bill moment (not that any of my Stars would understand the reference) when Humpty hit the floor, and true to form, two of my students then exclaimed "Oh! Now I know why they couldn't put him back together again!"

Eureka!

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We also colored eggs with the help of our teacher aide and Super Star Parent Volunteers, and enjoyed some crunchy snacks prepared by a creative mom (she says she used icing/frosting bags for the carrot shape, tissue paper for the tops):



...and of course, we prepared some April Showers Bring May Flowers handprint art for our bulletin board:







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What are your plans for Spring Break?

Bunny Buddies

My Super Stars love to spend time with their Fifth Grade Buddies! For Easter they made "bunny buddies," first tracing their feet, and then their buddies'. They carefully cut out their foot shape, and then used the scrap paper to cut out ears. Pink, white, and black construction paper was used for the ear and nose details, fluffy tail, and whiskers. Yes, many of them resemble mice or tall-eared cats, but they are cute nonetheless!

Bunny Details for Kari and the Rest of You Wonderful Readers

Here are some more photos of the papers/shapes my Stars used to make their construction paper "egg" bunnies:



I traced around an egg-shaped wall decoration on a piece of light brown construction paper (9X12 inches) and had enough scrap left over to cut out the bottom foot/feet piece. You'll also need two long rectangles in brown and two thin strips of pink...I had my students "round" the corners of those pieces as they assembled their bunnies. The "coveralls" were cut out as a template from another egg shape so they'd fit perfectly, but you'll want to help your students fit them over the bunny's body-they *can* get lopsided. Pretty scraps of printed paper were used as the patch on the coveralls, and students used a black marker or crayon for the face details and "stitching lines" on each side of the patch.





Hoppy (er, Happy) Easter!
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Many thanks to Sheryl over at Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds~ she made my day today when she shared the following Friendship Award with me:



"These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbon of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to those bloggers who must choose at least five more and include this cleverly written text into the body of their award."

Sheryl's blog makes me smile every time she posts! As a fan of developmentally appropriate practice and the teachers who make early childhood education the experience it *should be*, I was thrilled to discover her blog. One of her favorite quotes? "Teach what you know and continue to grow." Please visit Sheryl often (and remember she's over in my blogroll under Early Childhood)!

I'll be passing the award on this weekend-check back!

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Egg-Ceptional Eggs

This morning my students enjoyed Reschenka's Eggs, by Patricia Polacco during storytime:



The beautiful psanky eggs captured their imagination, but several students expressed apprehension about their ability to make "pretty eggs" in our art center, or when journaling. I quickly cut out tagboard egg shapes, and showed my Stars how to trace them on paper, with some eggs "hiding" behind others:



Take a look at what they created:

















EGG-CEPTIONAL!