Piñatas Activity at Cottonwood Creek

Last month our young residents had to return to school, which was exciting for some but also difficult for others because summer vacations were over. So after some brainstorming, they decided to make some piñatas. They had lots of fun and helped each other make the best piñatas possible. Thanks to everyone who was able to attend this community event. Have a good rest of your day!   

Cottonwood Creek

Happy Halloween!! The coordinator at Cottonwood Creek has recommend an amazing typing game. Plus check out this amazing decorations! 

 The students have shared with me a new typing game. It is very fun and educational. It is called “just typed this.”  I hope other coordinators can benefit from using this method of teaching children how to type.

Cottonwood Creek

Last month due to the celebration of the United States independence the kids at Cottonwood Creek created and discussed about the United States flag.  Below is the beautiful flag they made. 

This past July we focused on what the armed forces provide for all Americans. We went into depth on how blessed we are to have such heroic soldiers putting their blood sweat and tears into protecting our country. We also took the time to make this incredible American Flag out of construction paper. Some children cut the red paper while others cut the white paper and of course, making the stars was my task as it was most difficult. This flag took us about two weeks to make.

Cottonwood Creek

BOO to all!

Greetings from our spooky computer lab at Cottonwood Creek!  We have been working like little busy bats to get our room looking like a true Halloween fun house!  It has been a very fast going month with all the different projects we have worked on.  We've place a lot of effort in decorating this room to get it to look just right!  Starting with the haunted tree we reworked (recycled) from being a happy giving tree that we used last year for Thanksgiving, see the picture I have attached first as opposed to what we transformed it to now!  I had them color and cut some fun little bats that we then folded the wings so they seem to move when the air hits them. We then added a few more branches, scary eyes and a mouth and printed out a moon a witch going across it to give everything a more real feeling.

Like always we had to update our story land wall to go along with the season, so we picked Halloween themed coloring pages and wrote a story about what we colored! The children always enjoy this because they enjoy going up to the wall and reading what they wrote with the rest of the children!  As I mentioned before, we did some reusing of crafts we made last year, I save a few that were extraordinary and knew they were going to look great this year along with what we were going to craft, so as an example I hung some of the cute little witches from last year and decorated them with some bats as you can see in one of the photos below. The real fun was the funny little skeletons we made with the little pet cat and pumpkin we had fun getting them in all sorts of funny poses and setting the pumpkins in different ways for them to carry! Our classroom looks so festive and fun and the kids really enjoy this time of year because we go bananas decorating! I love it!!!

 

 

Cottonwood Creek

Hello Everyone!

This past week we have been decorating the room and also writing congratulations and good job cards for our five students that are promoting this year!  We have two that are leaving elementary school to go to middle school and three of my girls are going to high school!!!  Where has the time gone!   I am very proud of all of them and I can't believe that so much time has actually gone by!  I wanted to do something special for them and acknowledge how well they are doing all the while keep them inspired to keep reaching for the stars! I just know that they will get far and be great students like they have all been until now!  I printed out their names and displayed it on one of our doors as well as on a window facing the outside so all of our Cottonwood Creek residents can see that we have students that are promoting and maybe if they see them around, they can give them a word of encouragement to keep up the good work!

The end of the school year has arrived and summer vacation has set in!! We have many activities planned as well as hopefully some activities outside!  On days where the sun is not that scorching hot, we will be outside either with free play or group activity with plenty of water!  We have also been working on our Father's day gift for all our dads.  Once they are completed I will make another post about it.  I will leave it here and once our other project is complete I will send pictures of our Father's day gift!

Have a wonderful first week of summer vacation! 

 

 

Cottonwood Creek

Hello to all!

Just wanted to report back on some of the crafts we have been working on lately. This month we worked on making the room green by coloring and making four leaf clovers.  We colored and wrote St. Patrick's day themed stories for our storyland wall.  We also colored and cut clovers, pots of gold and even leprechauns for us to hang from our "rainbow" garland that we have hanging across the room.

I got busy working on our windows display with a few of the children.  Every month I try my best to make the front windows that look out to the front of the complex look nice and have a theme.  I do that to make it look pretty but more importantly, to show everyone in the complex how talented the children from Cottonwood Creek are!  This month was all about being green so I wanted to carry on the idea and focus also on the coming Earth Day that happens in April.

I found this template on five things we can do to be "earth day superheros" by listing the things that could help save and keep our planet a happy place to live.  I turned it into sort of a game...we sat around and went in a circle to see what child was able to list the most ways to help our planet (in the end everyone did such a great job, everyone got to use the computer a few extra minutes!).  We compiled a pretty long list and then from there everyone was able to pick the five ways they commit to helping our earth...to make it a better place for all.  I know earth day is not until next month but I couldn't help but do this activity now. 😊 I will keep you posted but for now I will go back on planing how to make an extra special easter egg hunt!  Happy Easter everyone!

 

 

Cottonwood Creek

Hello everyone!

This past month was a fun one! Valentine's Day always gets the children excited for making crafts. We started with coloring Valentine's Day themed coloring pages. We then began working on making special heart shaped pop-up Valentine Day cards.  Most of the children made them for their parents and they turned out Great!  They were able to add stickers, glitter, and anything else they wanted to use to make their card pretty like these different pattern scissors!  Please see picture below.  I also decorated the windows with lots and lots of pink, white and red hearts!  I loved the way the windows look!  And as I always do on holidays, if the children have been good, I get them a yummy treat and rent a movie for them and make it a fun day! T his time was no exception!  They were very excited to have a treat and have a fun movie day!  As of now we are working on getting the whole room as green as possible!  I will send some snaps of the room when it is completly decorated for St. Patrick's Day!

 

 

Cottonwood Creek

Hello!!!

This is going to be a long catch up post about the entire month of December and January. December was full of decorating activities and Christmas projects. We ended up working on less projects than I had anticipated because most of the children that normally come in were out of town for winter break. That being said, I still decked the halls with lots of colorful lights and garland. One of the activities included writing our names in Christmas bulb cutouts. I ended up reusing the same project because I thought it was so cute to put up on the Christmas tree. We also made lots of snowflakes to hang around the whole room which really made it feel like a winter wonderland! We colored christmas themed worksheets and made christmas cards to give loved ones! For the month of January we focused on getting back into the swing of things by working hard on homework and other assignments. We have also been working on stories for our storyland story wall. The birthday wall was recently updated since the old birthday wall was outdated and some of the children no longer live in the complex. I also came up with a cute idea that included balloons and some ribbon. I gave my idea a try and it actually looks pretty cute! I plan to have the children continue to work hard on academics so we can finish the school year off strong! That won't be the only thing we will do because Valentine's Day is right around the corner! I will keep you all updated but for now have a very good rest of this month.

 

 

 

Cottonwood Creek

Hello from Cottonwood Creek!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of family and friends!  Here at Cottonwood Creek we had a disappearing month of November! This month was full of fun activities to decorate the room!  We started with decorating our front windows with cute, little colorful turkeys!  I made a banner out of leaves which I printed out and cut to write "Happy Thanksgiving day" on.  (I know the picture is not that clear sorry!)  Next week we got to work on our longest project making a scarecrow and forming a little pumpkin/corn patch.  I started off with a simple idea of just giving a little background for all the scarecrows to have and it snowball into a full on little display for my wall; its awesome!  Each child put their name next to their scarecrow as well as on the leaves which they then colored for the tree I made!  I simply love the way it turned out!  And I think its a nice idea for a Christmas display as well.  The kids also had time to color and write a story for my story land wall.

Lastly, we put together a feast of our own here at the computer lab!  I figured since the kids have been on their best behavior for the last few months, that was plenty to be thankful for!  So I got a couple of pizzas and a pumpkin pie and the rest of the snacks the parents sent over to share with all of the little ones!  It was a nice time and a good time to show that thankfulness is the best!  We went around the table before we ate and shared something each one of us was thankful for!  It is truly an awesome holiday!  Here is hoping that all had as good a time as we did here at Cottonwood Creek!