May 2008 Activity Room Wall 3

This wall turned out better than I expected. The sand is cardboard taped together. The colors linen, carmel candy, and yellow ochre was individually sponged onto the cardboard. Then, linen and carmel candy were mixed to make a sand color and was diluted with water and glazed over the sponged colors. This made a sandy texture. The bugs were done with poster board and the opaque project. Paint, marker, crayon, and oil pastels were used. The clouds are recycled from the rainbow scene (see March 2008 post below). The sun was made out of construction paper as were the rays. The water is a table cover cut down and bunched up.

May 2008 Activity Room Wall 2

The second wall of the Activity Room was the "water" scene. All of the little bugs are reading bugs as they are lounging on rafts...or surfing! The waves are blue construction paper laminated. The bugs themselves were traced on the opaque projector onto poster board. Various mediums were used to color the bugs: paint, markers, crayon...even oil pastels.

May 2008 Activity Room Wall 1

This year's Summer Reading Program theme is "Catch the Reading Bug!" The graphics were done with poster board and an opaque projector. The artwork came from the CD we received with the Catch the Reading Bug information. The spiderweb is something we use for Halloween every year, but it happened to work perfectly with our summer theme. We also hung butterflies from the ceiling.

March 2008 Display 1

We have two porthole windows at the Children's Services desk. They are changed monthly or bi-monthly depending on the season. For Easter I always put in our little bunny holding the carrot, the Easter basket full of eggs and I load the case up with easter grass and other eggs around it. Sometimes I put ducks or other spring cutouts along the sides and back and hang eggs from the top.

March 2008 Activity Room Wall 3

This is my favorite St. Patrick's day themed decor. The words above the rainbow say "Follow the Reading Rainbow." The rainbow itself is made out of crepe paper and held on the wall with lots of straight pins. The clouds are white construction paper with foamy packing material on top. This year I also made small rainbows and hooked book covers to them with yarn. This project is easy to do and takes up a nice chunk of wall.

March 2008 Activity Room Wall 2

This is another wall of the Activity Room. The eggs are Microsoft clipart. The flowers are handmade by me. I found instructions online but basically all you do is take a square of paper, cut each corner to the center and then fold until you get the whirly-gig effect. A brad in the center secures everything. The stem and leaves are just green construction paper. The bunnies were remakes from some that were around forever. I glued cotton balls to the bottom for a little more depth. Another thing to do with the bunnies is to make yarn whiskers.

March 2008 Activity Room Wall 1

All I can say is that www.dltk-kids.com is one of my favorite sites EVER. They had a cute shamrock poem w/flannel board. I adapted it into decorations for one of the walls in our Activity Room. I printed the shamrocks out, pieced them together, and laminated them. Everyone should visit DLTK at least once.

March 2008 Bulletin Board

This was a fun and easy bulletin board. The border is shamrocks (United Art and Education). The shamrocks are Microsoft Word clipart. The gold coins were circles cut out of gold foil. The 3-D hats have been around Children's since the late 80's. The Irish couple date back to the 80's as well. The hat and pot of gold are handmade and laminated. I created the "Books Are Like Gold" sign in Word and added a few pot of gold stickers.