sweet pea wonderland: April is MOYC

April is Month of the Young Child. At my center, each class is doing a project that includes all of the kids. At the end of April, we are auctioning off all of the projects. Each project will have a starting bid of $25.00 and the profits benefit the classrooms.

A lot of the classrooms are doing something with painted handprints. For example, one room bought a white rocking chair and each child will have their handprint on it. But for some reason, I really don't like the idea of handprints. I mean, if I were a parent, what would I do with a rocking chair (or anything else for that matter) with a lot of handprints (that weren't all my child's) on it? Sure, the projects will be cute, but I just don't think they would be my top choice of a class project.

Since I work with toddlers, it was somewhat of a challenge to come up with a project that involved 12 children in which they would do most of the work.

I ended up thinking of this idea. I bought small wooden letters from Joann's for under $4 for the pack. I also bought a collage box from there. It ended up being $8 or so, after taking 60% off! My idea was to have the kids paint the letters of the alphabet and then glue them in the collage box to make a super cute frame to hang in a bedroom, playroom, or anywhere really! (I did choose which letters would be certain colors, to make a pretty pattern. But the kids chose which color they wanted to paint, and I gave them the right letters. I didn't show them how to paint the letters- I let them go to town. If I were doing it, I would have painted all the edges and left no white spots. But this was their project :) )

I taped the back of each letter to a paper plate so they wouldn't move around when little hands were painting. It worked wonders.

I really like the way it turned out and almost wish I would have bought a second set so we could hang it in our classroom!

Here are the photos: