Wednesday, November 7, 2007

My hands still smell like cinnamon

We had After School Adventures today (and luckily nearly everyone showed up). I had the brilliant idea to do these pumpkin spice decorations. I figured it would be simple. I got the recipe from Glues, Brews, and Goos: Recipes and Formulas for Almost Any Classroom Project by Diana F. Marks. The dough is basically spices and glue. We'd make up the dough ahead of time and all the kids would have to do is squish it flat, cut it out with a cookie cutter, and poke a hole in it with a straw so they could tie a ribbon through it next week when they pick it up to take it home.

Except...

The dough would not set up. It was way too sticky and gooey to use cookie cutters. While B read books and told stories to the kids, I spent a frantic half hour adding flour to it to get it to a consistency where we might be able to use it. We had a backup plan in case I couldn't get it to work, but eventually I thought it would be okay to use. It still took the kids forever to work with it and get their shapes cut out. The older kids did great, but the younger kids all needed lots of help.

I think the kids still had fun with the project. It took forever to clean up and I am exhausted from it. I am also living in fear that they won't dry correctly or that someone will throw them away or that our little library mice friends will make an appearance and eat them up. But if all goes well, they will be dry by next Wednesday, the kids will put ribbons in them, and the kids will take them home. Cross your fingers.

Lesson learned: Try out your projects in advance.

The good thing about the pumpkin spice shenanigans is that it kept me from thinking about the Preschool Fair too much... Yes, the Preschool & Enrichment Fair is tomorrow. I don't even know what could go wrong, but I'm anxious about something going wrong. I'm also anxious that we won't get a lot of people showing up... Thursday nights are traditionally quiet for us and we haven't had a lot of success with getting people to show up for programs on Thursday nights. So we shall see...

In other news, I'm doing booktalks for a small class of 4th-6th graders at a Montessori school in a couple of weeks. I'm super psyched because it's a great group and I have a bunch of books that I'm really excited about. Prepping for the booktalks: