St. Patrick's Day

March 17th is one of my favorite days of the year, St. Patrick's Day.  I am a granddaughter of William and Bernice Clancy and cousin to the O'Briens.  We LOVE this holiday and all it's festivities from parades, wearing of the green, to eating corn beef and cabbage and for some even drinking  green beer!  In our family several traditions have carried on throughout  the years.

 One of the traditions our family partakes in is parades and food.  That's my mom and niece at a restaurant after a St. Patrick's Day parade, in South Carolina.    Corn beef and cabbage is definitely on the menu for this holiday!

This is my cousin from the O'Brien clan-Suzy Toronto.  She also has a very creative business called Wacky Wonderful Women.  Her business creates stationary products, mugs, coffee mugs and even Irish items.  If you're not familiar with her product line check her out!  She celebrates St. Patrick's Day full out from Christmas till this day.  I feel lucky that after losing touch with her for over twenty years we have reconnected!

This is a claddagh charm.  In Irish tradition mothers give these to their daughters to be passed on to generations.  There are also claddagh rings that are used for engagement and wedding rings.  The meaning behind this signature piece of jewlery is the hands on each sign stand for friendship, the heart in the middle represents love and the crown stands for loyalty.  My mother has four daughters so she gave each of us a charm to place on a necklace since the ring traditionally symbolizes engaged or married. I love mine!  I wear it daily as my Irish signature.

Corn beef and cabbage dinners are our yearly tradition with all the fixings such as potatoes, green beans, and capped with a brew of Irish coffee.  YUM!

My Irish table is set with green candles, leprechauns, gold charger plates and gold glasses.  I sprinkled a little green and gold shamrock confetti for a little sparkle when the candles are lit.

How do you celebrate St. Patrick's Day?  Thanks for stopping by and come by again!!

This winter I spotted a very attractive window display in a cupcake shop.  I asked the cupcake shop owner if she made the window displays and she said no someone else made them.  Hoping to find out how she made them I walked out of the shop and stared and studied how I could improvise my own decor for my classroom.

I just happened to have a stash of cotton balls and a ball of white yarn. I measured the windows in my classroom and estimated I could make eight strands of cotton balls easily.  After measuring my yarn and cutting six lengths I started stringing the cotton balls onto the yarn with the needle.

This is a close-up of the string of "snowballs" on my classroom window.  I know, I know, where's the snow in Michigan?   I put this up just before we had our snow storms in February and now the landscape is blanketed in snow that is just starting to melt!

The kids thought these were the coolest thing!  Once the snow appeared on the landscape it was a perfect backdrop to this window display.  Would do you think?  An easy and quick project that made a big impact.

Thanks for stopping by and come back again!

Dr. Seuss Celebration Night

A week ago my elementary building kicked off Dr. Seuss Reading Month with a Literacy Night.  We had games, prizes and guest readers.  Here are a few pics of the activities of this night.

Our former kindergarten teachers, Jodie and Marsha,  as readers Thing 1 and Thing 2.  Aren't they festive?'

Our high school mascot The Colt reading to children.

Out staff taking time out from the festivities for a photo op.

This is our local volunteer fireman in our community , Larry Foster Goodrich who also happens to be one of our school board members.  Larry loves to help and volunteer all the time.

This is a "Hungry Caterpillar" that our librarian Lisa Watson created.  She punched out circles on the Ellison Die-Cut and gave each class a set of circles.  Each student that gets a 100% on their AR test writes their name and the book title on the circle and take it to the library to attach to the caterpillar.  The goal is to have the caterpillar stretched around the entire library by the end of the month!  She already has 560 book titles up!! Kids are amped up!

The big prize for the night was a bike that was housed in our school showcase all week.  Kids goggled over it and were overheard saying, "that's the bike I'm gonna win".  Here is our principal Susan Caswell and a National Honor Student announcing the winner. A big shout out to the National Honor Society Students who primarily put this celebration together for our students!  Bravo!

Thanks for stopping by hope you got some ideas for Dr. Seuss month!  I'd love to hear some of your ideas of what you're doing to celebrate!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Friday night we kicked off the Read Across America Celebration with Dr. Seuss at our school.  We invited parents and students to take part in many activities which I will include in another post.  For today I am posting pictures of all our classroom doors we decorated to jump start the month of celebration.  Each teacher decorated their door from one of the Dr. Seuss books.  Can you guess where each of them came from?

The Cat In The Hat

Thing One and Thing Two

GUESS?

Horton Hears a Who

Fox on Socks

Dr. Seuss ABC

The decorated themed doors added alot of flavor to our Dr. Seuss celebration night.  I'll post tomorrow some of the activities we did!

 Thanks for stopping by and---Keep on Reading Across America!!