Valentine's Day Crafts

It ends up my Resident is soloing on Valentine's Day, which is a pretty good idea, I think: celebration-management is important and not really taught.  I told her she was welcome to come up with her own crafts or I would provide the simple ones we generally do:

1. Giant Envelopes.  My school may be out of markers and most colors of construction paper, but we have a lot of 12" by 15" envelopes.  Now that these envelopes can't be used for Donors Choose thank yous (too big for the no-postage-necessary label), their supply remains undiminished (site-wide, we've had maybe 150 projects filled).  Anyway, these are great for collecting valentines - unlike paper bags, they don't stand up and then fall over, and they're sturdy.  I have plenty of stamps, stickers, and scraps of construction paper for decorating these.
2. Pattern Necklaces.  I try to avoid foam craft items, I make an exception for these beads.  The kids sort their beads, make a pattern, and then string it.  This is a nice assessment, actually, because they have a variety of attributes to use and can use more than one, or make a pattern of two patterns, etc.  

A couple of weeks ago, we had a small group covering "Cutting is Awesome", during which I taught the kids how to cut hearts (using the "draw the top of a two" method), snowflakes, etc.  That's enough Valentine's action for me.

Science of Color

I like teaching about color, light, and color theory in Kindergarten for many reasons, but definitely the art/science projects that come out of the unit are a total bonus.  This project is easy and extremely fun.  The results are impressive, and the kids engage in a lot of hands-on learning about color blending and secondary and tertiary colors while completing the project.

Downside: unless you have the materials on hand, which I generally do, it's kind of expensive.  You could do the same project with contact paper, which is cheaper than laminate sheets, but the results are not as good.  Tissue paper doesn't allow the same color-blending effects as cellophane does.

Stained Glass Window Sheets
You will need:

• 9x12 self-adhesive laminating sheets, 1 per student
• colored cellophane (you can use rolls but these sheets are easier) in the primary or primary and secondary colors

Teacher Preparation (approximately 15 minutes):

• cut laminating sheets in half*
• cut colored cellophane into various pieces: cut some smaller and some slightly larger shapes, roll sheets and cut to create long, thin pieces, etc.
• portion cut cellophane for student use (I use cafeteria trays and put out enough for 2-3 students to share one tray)
• completed or partially-completed project so that students know what to do

Student Instruction (5 - 10 mintues):

• Explain that students will be making a stained-glass like project while exploring color blending.
• Review color blending already taught.
• Demonstrate how to remove the backing from the laminate sheet and how to affix cellophane to the sheet.  Remind students to keep the sticky side up.
• Note that all adhesive should be covered (no clear areas left) and that pieces can and should overlap.
• Younger students should be directed that the confetti-throwing approach leads to heartbreak and mess, as pieces do not stick and fall to the floor, where students will have to pick them up because their teacher is old and does not like stooping.
• Identify procedures for completing the project, cleaning the work area, and activities for early finishers.
• Send students to begin project.

Project Completion (20 - 30 minutes):

• Circulate and monitor, drawing out student observations about color and color blending.  (I like to do this while working on my own project; I stop by each table and sit with the kids for a couple of minutes before moving to another table).
• As students finish, assist in finishing the project: using the other half of the laminate sheet to seal the work closed, trimming any sticky ends, and writing students' names.  A hole punch will allow projects to be hung.

We did this yesterday and the results were pretty awesome; this is one of those projects where other teachers ask you how to do it and to borrow materials.  It's almost as cool as the primary color blending paddles the kids made last week, which are very labor-intensive but worth it.

*Alternatively, you could use two sheets per project, or simply remove half the backing from a sheet and have students fold the project over to seal it shut.  This has the added bonus of not needing teacher assistance to complete the project but can be difficult for young students to manage.

Paper People Autobiography Project

The first year I did this, with the help of a volunteer we traced and cut out each child.  This took days upon days to complete.  (That volunteer is now a credentialed teacher at my school, for the record...but pink slipped.)

So now we start with these.  They are intensely lightweight, but lining them with tagboard is more work than I can generally do at the end of the year.  Instead I demand the kids carry them carefully and provide tape surgery as needed.

Anyway.  The kids brainstorm, draft and edit an "autobiography" that covers several key issues (name, future career, something you like, something you can do, etc.).  I publish these by typing them up and printing them in the child's favorite color.  Then I paste them to the paper person's torso.

Other than the autobiography, the paper person is colored and given hair meant to match the child's own (although not with the detail of the Colors of Us project; that would take too long and too much paint).  I have doll hair, yarn and chenille stems for the hair and multicultural crayons and colored pencils for the bodies...oh, and giant googly eyes for the eyes.

Then the kids get to dress their simulacra.  I have a variety of tracing shapes for bottoms and jackets.  The jackets are tricky because the kids trace it, then flip it over and trace it the other way (to get a left and right side).  I have various cloth and felt remnants for the clothes and also some cardstock.  The bottoms are pasted on, but we attach the jackets at the shoulder with brads so that it can be "opened" to read the autobiography.

After that, I let the kids loose with buttons and jewels and similar geegaws to decorate their clothes as they like.  And then I hang the paper people in the cafeteria for the Promograduation.

These look great and the kids love making them and are always hot to take them home until they get forgotten in the Promograduation insanity.  I take photos of the kids holding their person so that their eventual destruction doesn't bum me out (this is one of maybe two projects I get really attached to and feel bad about finding destroyed).

Side Benefits

My Resident is soloing this week and next.  So far, I have entirely prepped out an end of the year project, kept all our plants alive during the heat wave, made a calendar set for next year, and spent five minutes and rather more dollars at an online vintage flash sale.  (Let's just say that my vacation souvenir budget has been, erm, deducted in the amount of one fine dress.)  I'm always there, and I watch what's going on or take notes/get involved when needed, but for the most part she's in charge.

Next week I will spend the time doing end of year assessment, so today is the end of the semi-holiday.  And since it's the second week, I'll be able to focus entirely on the child I'm assessing (as opposed to having one ear open for drama - this is the longest period I've ever had a student teacher teaching solo in my room and it's a test in releasing control, that's for sure).

Ongoing Teaching Fascinations

One of the things that I want my students to find interesting and enjoy is coloring neatly.  Mind you, I didn't say coloring within the lines or coloring true to life.  When we go over what it means to do a nice job coloring, these ideas generally come up in the brainstorming.  The former I nix entirely; it may be that exciting coloring requires outside the line work.  As to the latter, if I want true to life coloring it's part of the directions.  (In science, for instance if we call it a "diagram" or a "science sketch" part of that is coloring the way you see it.  And certain portraiture projects involve accurate coloring.)

In my Kindergarten, neat coloring means:

• controlled strokes (long or short as needed, but not with total abandon)
• a legitimate attempt to color all colorable areas (leaving stuff uncolored is okay if you have a reason for it) in a picture
• prioritizing completeness of one picture rather than finishing (say, if they're coloring a take home reader)
• using multiple colors (at least three)

Later in the year, we add experimenting with shade and coloring more lightly/more heavily.

To assist students in this, I try to provide the best coloring tool for the job.  But I have spent some time working on finding a tool that is manageable and high-interest (if the tool is manageable, I will provide it more often; if it is high-interest, the kids spend more time with it).

For the edification of equally minutiae-minded people, here's what I've learned.

Big Crayons

Pros: Available in a wide array of colors.  Some students find thicker items easier to grasp.  Students generally color more heavily.  Very nice for crayon shaving/crayon melting projects.

Cons: Boring.  Many students associate big crayons with "preschool babies" and similar and want thinner ones.

Use: Out and always available.

Regular Crayons

Pros: Available in a huge array of colors.  Some students find thinner items easier to grasp and like using "big kid" supplies.  Very nice for shade and tone studies.  Children are more likely to use a tripod grasp when using these.

Cons: Requires training around "Why it is not a big deal when crayons break but we shouldn't break them on purpose".  Kids get bored.

Use: Out and always available.

Oil Pastels

Pros: Color well on black.  Smudging allows interesting color effects.

Cons: Messy.  Finished works need to be sprayed with fixative.

Use: Restricted to certain art projects.

Glitter Crayons

Pros: Thinner, therefore "big kid" supplies.  These inspire heavy coloring since the more you color over something, the more glittery it gets.  High novelty factor.  Finished works have a nice shimmer.  The glitter embeds itself nicely and doesn't get all over everything.

Cons: I haven't found these in assortments larger than 16 colors.  These are expensive (~$2.50/box), so we don't have enough for the whole class to use at once.  This can cause interpersonal drama.  Not that easy to find unless I am willing to pay shipping (I just bought the last three boxes at Flax, for instance).

Use: I toss a few of these in every crayon tray and require that they stay where placed unless borrowed through a conversational exchange (no snatching) and returned.

Thick Markers

Pros: Exciting for children.  The marker stands inspire sharing, teach the art of "cap until it clicks" and reinforce rainbow color order.

Cons: Leak through paper.  Hard to do color mixing.

Use: Restricted to large projects.

Thin Markers

Pros: Exciting for children.  Small tip enables detail work.  Do not leak through paper as badly as thick markers.

Cons: Not the best tool when there is not ample time for coloring, since kids will use these for a long time.  Hard to do color mixing (although nice for design work using darker colors on lighter colors).  I don't have marker stands for thin markers and the click of the well-placed cap is not as audible, so there is loss to drying out.

Use: Generally available by request.  (They have to ask but the answer is usually yes.)  We keep fresh roll trays around for sharing these out.

Gel F(x) Markers

Pros: Nice on black paper.  Interesting "fade in" effect that is fun to watch.

Cons: Run out very quickly.  Color mixing is not really possible.  I have only found these in thick sizes, so they don't lend themselves well to detail work.  Expensive; I got a class pack from DonorsChoose but I wouldn't spend the $70 replacing it.

Use: Restricted to black-paper projects as a special treat.

Mr. Sketch Scented Stix

Pros: Between the scent and the tiny tips, kids will color with these in great detail.  Inspire sharing.  Appear to last for a very long time; caps go on securely without a lot of effort.  The scents apparently last a long time (the kids will sniff their work for days afterward and claim they still smell the pens; I haven't tried this).

Cons: Leak through paper more than other thin markers.  Require teaching "How to Share the Scent of a Marker" lessons before someone takes an inadvertent pen to the nostril.  Not the best tool for projects with a short timeline - left to their own devices, some kids will spend 90 minutes with these.  I personally loathe the smell of almost all of these.  Expensive; I got a class pack from DonorsChoose but would not really want to spend $80 to get another one.

Colored Pencils

Pros: Excellent for reinforcing tripod grasp.  Allow blending and shading.  Available in a wide array of colors.  Kids will use these with good enjoyment.

Cons: The great art of sharpening is seductive.  In any colored pencil project, two to three children will want to spend all of their time sharpening until the points are extra sharp.  It may also be necessary to see what will happen if the other end gets sharpened (answer: nothing.  I have better things to get grumpy about).  Pencil sharpeners are not first-day-of-school tools in my classroom and I find colored pencils do not sharpen well in an electric sharpener, so these require a lot of work for me.

Use: Go-to tool when true to life coloring is required or thin markers are not available/suitable.  Otherwise they're available by request, but requests are pretty rare.

Mathy/ELD Craft Project

The Week is a Cycle and So Is a Necklace Necklaces
You will need:

• pipe cleaners, cut in thirds (approximately 60)
• hole punches
• 2"x3" rectangular tags (construction paper, card stock or tag board) in five colors, one of each per necklace*
• 3" diameter circles (same) in two colors, one of each per necklace*
• 4" x 1/2" rectangular tags (same), one per necklace*

Preparatory Work:

• Write the days of the weeks on the tags, using a color for each day and the circles for the weekend days.
• Write "Days of the Week" on the long, thin tag.
• If you do not have multiple hole punches, punch holes in each tag: one on each end.  Otherwise have the kids do this - it's good eye training and motor development.  And they looooooooove it.
• You may find that pre-bagging a set of materials for each child is worthwhile - or at least pre-bagging the tags.
• Decide in advance if the week starts with Monday or Sunday.  Sunday is traditional.  If you can't decide skip the "days of the week" long tag.

Objectives: Students will order the days of the week, recognize that the week is a regular unit of time that repeats and is comprised of seven days and identify the weekend days (vs. weekdays).  Students will practice using the time concepts before and after to organize days of the week.  Students will use fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination to manipulate supplies.

Potential Sentence Frames:

------day comes before ------day.

------day comes after -------day.

------day is a weekday/weekend day.

------day and -----day are weekdays.

Saturday and Sunday are the weekend.

What with all that, the project is pretty self-explanatory: the kids end up with necklaces that show the days of the week in order and demonstrate that the week happens over and over again.  While making the necklaces, you can practice word recognition and chunking words.

You will want to make sure that the pipe cleaners (I'm just too old to switch over to "chenille stems", I'm afraid) are not twisted to close, since this leaves poky ends.  Rather, after the kids form a loop they should wrap the ends over it.

You can also have the kids join each day with two links (rather than looping two on one pipe cleaner link); this makes for a longer necklace that I suspect is also longer-lasting; however, we were on the dregs of the pipe cleaners.

This can be done with any ordered, cyclic event.  Necklaces or bracelets are good for cycles since their shape is cyclic.  We've also done water cycle bracelets this year, using colored pony beads for each step (an excellent retelling device and it reinforces how you can start anywhere in a cycle).

We are moving toward a more Balanced Literacy/Teachers College writing program, and at Kindergarten we felt like doing that would require that students really, really get time and time concepts. So we've been getting pretty detailed on that: identifying and ordering the days of the week and also understanding that weeks make up months make up years are made of days are made of hours, etc.

In other crafty news, I have decided against doing strawberry basket + ribbon woven baskets with telephone wire handles full of paper flowers for Mothers' Day.  This is because we get out of school so early and we have the massive Paper People Autobiography project AND the maracas and tambourines to get done for the Promotion.  I think I will have the kids do the card with the pop-up hand holding flowers.

*Really, you could use whatever you wanted providing you can write on it.  A retiring teacher gave me a bag of precut heavyweight astrobrights matching these measurements, and I wanted to use it up.  Fancy people might want to go in rainbow order - use indigo and perhaps white for the long tag.

Crafty Plans

We only have a week before spring break, so I don't want to start any major projects (specifically, the self portrait project).  I need to decide what to do, though - the shorter day during conferences week cuts down on the arts and crafts.  So the kids miss out.  When I pulled out the stinky markers and the fruit stickers to decorate some flyers on Friday they went into spasms of delight.  This is sort of depressing, really: I mean, I want them to be excited but I couldn't help but feel they had been deprived beforehand.

I'm learning toward doing tertiary color blending using cellophane and high-end self-laminate (the kind that is truly clear, not vaguely frosted).  We could also do Child Mondrian this week; we are moving into measurement in math and working with lines is a neat way to use some of those measurement words (heavier, longer, thicker, and so on).  Or we could continue with the Resident's TE and do some puppetry around her reading comprehension project.

Last week the kids finished their paper dolls - the holding hands kind.  They decorate the one in the middle to look like them and then decorate the other two (they are in threes) to look like two of their friends.  This culminates an ELD/MELD/Social Studies unit.  They get to use paper crafting for the hair (pinch-tearing and quilling) and various cool papers for clothing (this year, I had "kente" paper, glitter paper and glasscrafting paper available).  These are all hanging up holding hands in a giant circle.  A few kids chose to make me one of their friends, I think because my hair offered exciting choices in color work and styling technique.

In other news, I got two new students and now have 18 again.  This makes me happy.  Having a small class is really quite nice - 21 to 16 makes a huge difference in what we do - but also a downer since we all miss the kids who are gone.

One of the kids in my class got hit by a jump rope handle in the after school program.  That child's conference was at the same time, so they brought the kid to my room.  My student wanted me to tell all the kids about the injury (which was minor but bloody).  So I told them that the child had fought a monster, which whipped out with its whippy, spiked tail and hit the child's mouth.  The other kids were extremely impressed.

When the kids have bananas in the school lunch, we have them strip the peels right away so we can compost them for them (it cuts down on the end of lunch to recess transition hysteria, which is bad enough with the milk pouring and the difficulty the kids have in managing all the stuff they have to carry).  We refer to this as getting the bananas out of their pajamas.  So when I came across some stickers with bananas WEARING CLOTHES I had to get those.  We have the best stickers.  I try to buy some for each child's interest: I got puffy robots because I have two children who looooove robots, for instance.  The extrinsic/intrinsic issue is not a big deal; they get stickers when I feel like it and don't generally ask for them (answer: "No.").  Moreover, I have hate for sticker swap city and that tends to lead to children immediately backpacking stickers anyway.

A quick scan at the numbers

...suggests that I won't have to worry too much about reading people ripping on my school (about which they know nothing).  SFUSD has some enrollment statistics out, and I'm going to guess based on my read of these that the people who will not be happy to have been assigned our school are not also the kind of people to complain about same on the internet.


If the offers match the population we enroll, our school will remain fairly diverse but continue in its general direction (more Latino and Asian children, fewer African American children).  (Our school has been diverse but in flux for a number of years, and diversity should be understood to mean "few if any white children".)

In this we are not common, and I will be interested to see what the new assignment system does for district-wide school diversity.  There are some stunning numbers in the data release - 78% of offers at Grattan, for instance, are to white children.  (This would tend to suggest that the idea that the nefarious and secret discriminatory quota policies of SFUSD will finally die, but I both digress and doubt it.)

In other news, I think we must have won the Layoff Sweepstakes but SFUSD doesn't seem as inclined to let us have the data on that this year.  (Perhaps because we disseminated it so widely.  You should've seen Eric Mar!  I thought his eyes would pop out of his head.)  In between noting that there are solutions to inequitable layoffs that don't involve overturning unions or turning to education deform, I managed to get my crafty layoff posters up this week.  So now we turn up the noise.

I mean, like to 11.  That's the problem with laying off all the young things: they can still organize and get loud AND show up to teach tomorrow.

Simply, SFUSD cannot claim to be going "Beyond the Talk" if they are willing to lay off nearly half of our staff.  How many elementary classroom teachers got pink-slipped?  Less than fifty.  There are what, eighty elementary schools in the District?  And my school gets seven of those?  It's not about seniority: it's about equal opportunity.

The district's courage should not rest entirely in its southeast side teachers - but it does.  Their annual reward for doing a job that the state refuses to fund and the district refuses to value is a pink slip.  What does that say about access and equity?  Given SFUSD's long history of failing poor children of color, there is a pressing need to build relationships and trust.  Boo-hoo-hooing about seniority and legal requirements is fine - but you can't also pretend that you aim to build that trust.

Hence: 11.  Or louder.

Perils of the Early Start

Were we a late-start school, I would not have needed to walk to work in driving rain and hail.  I was very glad for the new space heater.  While my coat was too drenched to dry out in a day, my shoes were only damp by afternoon.

Whenever we get a heavy rain, the drain in the main schoolyard is overwhelmed and we get a neat lake: a giant puddle that can get to be six inches deep.  It has wind-waves and everything.

Yesterday I taught my class how to fold a paper boat.  We made some predictions and went sailing on Lake Elementary.  Then we wrote about it (new vocabulary word: "waterlogged").

It was awesome!  By nine o'clock it was sunny outside, and the breeze came from different directions so the boats sailed all over the place before taking on too much water and sinking.  No one stepped in the lake but one child mostly on accident (well, and then me and the yard teacher doing boat retrieval).  The kids' writing was really good, too; some of them wrote about the process of boat-making, some of them about the experiment.

In short: good times.

Favorite Craft Projects of Children

 Craft Projects Kids Lurve and Adults...Tolerate.
Fireworks.  Even though I have an amazing selection of glitter painters, chip glitter glue, a few glitter crayons and some glitter paint, there is apparently something deeply satisfying about this project. Anyway, each child needs

• a large sheet of black construction paper
• a bottle of white glue
• glitter
• optional pencil

Optionally, children may draw with a pencil on their paper first.  Whatever the case, the kids "draw" with the glue by squeezing with one hand.  This is important to emphasize, since two-handed approaches often lead to disaster.  Usually I suggest they focus on abstract designs, firework explosion stars and whatnot and I will write names in pencil using fancy lettering for them to glue-trace.  Once the glue is applied, children can liberally shake glitter all over the paper.  I shake the resulting work over the trash, the glitter adheres only to gluey sections and children are amazed.

Just Give Me Some Paper Already.  After ten years in the classroom, I have at long last discovered the "draw the top of a 2" method of heart cutting.  It helps for those children who really really really really want a perfect perfect perfect perfect heart.  For the other nineteen, explain that you don't have to pencil anything first!  Each child needs

• small pieces of any paper
• scissors, preferably ones that will indeed cut hair (the kids have more control over cutting with these).

Demonstrate the amazing property of symmetry and let them loose.  The kids will cut some pretty impressive things; one of my girls cut out a ringer for this jacket.

Kids will need some method of displaying their cutting prowess.  I have each child decorate a 12X15 envelope for their Valentines, which is an excellent canvas for their project.

Paper Plate Terraria/Aquaria/oh, just call it a Diorama.
We did these last year with blue cellophane and they were portholes into the deep ocean.  This year, we made snail terraria.  The snails were woodsies (not these awesome Woodsies I had as a kid, these, painted by the kids) with cut-up Silly Bandz tentacles and rhinestone eyespots.  The soil was dyed rock salt (the kids blended several colors to make brown soil, which they enjoyed greatly).  They also added foam lettuce stickers for food, collage leaves for coverage and flowers and plants of dyed macaroni.

All of this is glued to a paper plate, which is affixed to another paper plate that has its center circle cut out and replaced with cellophane, acetate or duralar, thereby serving as a porthole into the magical world below.

This week I also did pinch-tearing construction paper (see here) art with the kids.  Most of them were into it but a couple were not so much.  So I brought out the heavy artillery: KINDERGARTEN MUSEUM.  Specifically, I had each child title his or her artwork and wrote the title and the name of the artist on a label, which I affixed to a corner of the art.  Through this magical process, all projects are validated in some way that makes them more exciting.  Also the titles are often worthy of the finest cutting-edge works ("Two Robots Play a Game with the Little One's Head", "The Hopping House", "Ballerina Zoo", etc.).

My classroom craft projects tend to prioritize the materials I can get and the things I know how to do from my own childhood and adult crafting (for instance, I quill, so I have a set of plastic, child-safe slotted tools and needles).  Sometimes I am gifted materials that I haven't used and require experimentation.  For instance, I was given twenty sheets of shrink plastic and it's been sitting around for about a year.  So I brought it home this weekend for experimentation.  It is my intention to make this.

Arts and Crafts Things Kids Like and Adults Lurve

1. Child Mondrian.  Just as a term, "neo-plasticism" seems very evocative of our mountainous piles of disposable geegaws, no?  Anyway, letting the kids loose with thin strips of black matte paper, white paper, tempera in the primary colors and q-tips or brushes make for a cool project.  It goes nicely with a unit on primary colors and hue.
2. Child Pollock.  A very nice project for the end of the year: make sure to recommend that children wear clothes that can get dirty.  All you need is a big space, an old bedsheet and a mess of brushes and paint.  Kids enjoy seeing the impact different movements and distances.  You can read Action Jackson in advance, too.
3. Paper Plate Aquaria/Terraria.  Bonus points for using blue cellophane on aquaria.

There are also plenty of projects that kids love and adults can take or leave.  These can be very fun; I need to make a list of some of the ones that have gone really well so I can get the materials to do them again.

Something else that is very fun is showing fifteen minutes of The Muppet Show as a five day of excellence whole class reward.  I provided fifteen minutes of the Harry Belafonte episode (because the performance of "Turn the World Around" is going to be EPIC and I am experimenting with using Mr. Belafonte as our lead-in to some of our social studies unit (working together, social change, all that)).  When we got to the outside door, I invoked my magical teacher skills to turn them all into Animal having a drum off with Harry Belafonte.  So they ran out the door beating frenetically on imaginary drums while screaming.  From my perspective it was kind of awesome.  That perspective would be "waving from the door".

Mad Crafty.

Winter Wreaths
You will need:

• packing peanuts (12 or so per kid)
• green fingerpaint
• chenille stems
• glitter (optional)

1. Give children a pile of packing peanuts and a dollop of paint.  Encourage them to paint the peanuts using their fingers as opposed to dipping them into their paint.  Mention in grave tones the Dread Project That Never Dries (totally works).
2. Once children have amassed a pile of green packing peanuts, direct them to impale their packing peanuts onto a chenille stem.  Peanuts should be placed closely together.
3. Once the stem is largely covered, take stem and send children to nearest soap and water.  Remind them to avoid touching walls, floors, their faces, their jackets and other items until they are less green about the hands.
4. If you have been smart enough to teach color word metaphors, at least one child will inform you that his or her hands are in fact the green eyed monster.
5. Curl the chenille stem so that it makes a circle and wrap closed.
6. Invite children to select a glitter color.  Note that glitter looks best when used sparingly.  Note that if we use up our glitter supply in December, we will not have any in January, February, March, April or May.  Resign self to epic glitter shortages by early Spring.
7. While projects are still wet, allow children to sprinkle glitter on both sides.  Glitter will adhere to the paint.  Cough theatrically from spendthrift glitter use.
8. When the projects are dry, a small bow can be made using another chenille stem (half).
9. Affix wreath to yarn loop or suction cup hook.

These actually come out pretty cute.  The kids are always terribly impressed.  I didn't do them last year, but we did them today.