Shopkins Birthday Party

Here is a personal one!
My daughter is in love with Shopkins... Like most three to thirty-year old, normal person would!
Those things are adorable!

Well, for her fourth birthday celebration we threw her a Shopkins Fun Party.

We had look everywhere for ideas and ended up with more than we could handle...
Here are a few things we did and a list of those things that we sure could have done but couldn't in the end.

Since we were on a budget, first we printed out the Shopkins Tea Party package provided for FREE at Moose Toys website. That is where we printed the Happy Birthday Bunting from. It also includes cupcake wrappers and a generic invitation. I downloaded it a long time ago, and now I cannot find it in their website. If you need the link you can find it below, just keep reading... just keep reading [Dory singing tune].

We used the poster for Bubbleisha to create our own digital invitation. We could have printed it as a postcard, but decided to just send an evite instead.

We decided to make a jumbo cupcake and dress it as Cupcake Queen, plus several mini cupcakes with just Shopkins eyes to suggest all of the other cupcake characters. It turned out quite nicely!

I do have to confess, we printed a lot of stuff for this party, but since we own a printing business, that was not an issue. Beware, if you don't like to waste a lot of color ink, this might not be helpful to you!

As treats, we found a couple of great sellers on Etsy, that carried digital files with Shopkins theme and actual products, such as Shopkins Lip Balm. We bought the pattern to print out the wrappers for Cheeky Chocolate and Poppy Corn. Oh, and of course, we purchased two sets of lip balms from Lip Balm Shop on Etsy.

The rest of the printouts we simply found a free image on the internet and blew it up to fit the candies. Make sure you find an image that has a Creative Commons License.

Because it was raining, we couldn't break our piñata, but we were saved by our vending machine!

-We will break that piñata on a sunny day for sure!-

Our vending machine was a take on the all-so-popular punch box found on pinterest. We simply painted and decorated it as a Shopkins Vending Machine. Because we had planned on making this a prize delivery for those that won at the board games, we were ready to use it in substitution of the piñata!

 We had a blast! Adults and children alike...

Everyone played the games and when someone won, they had a chance to punch a hole on the box (break through the tissue paper), and get a prize. The prizes included small Shopkins related items, such as pencil toppers and card games, plus some sports balls (stress squeeze balls) and other toys preferred by boys - hid mostly in the blue spots -.

These are the games we played...

Also, we dressed mini soda cans with the image of Soda Pop. Our piñata was indeed a Soda Pop, custom made by a great local piñata place. A&E Party Solutions.

The food as a Make Your Own Taco Terrie taco bar... with crispy shells and soft warmed maiz tortillas. For drinks we had bottles of sodas served in red Solo cups with straws and umbrellas. You could make a punch, but we wanted it to be very simple. The looks of the Little Sipper were enough!

Ok, now... to what we did not do!

Here is a list of all the things we thought of, but ended up not having time to complete, or it was out of our budget. 

• Make mini burgers or sliders and mini hotdogs as Cheesy B and Frank Furter
• Place Shopkins eyes on oranges, pears, peaches, etc... 
• Dress sticks of string cheese as Miss Swiss
• Make hot air ballons with the left over baskets of shopkins, filled with candy
• Make Lippy Lips treat containers with Pringles cylinders
• Jell-o shots dressed as Little Sipper
• Slices of watermelon next to an image of Melonie Pips, same goes for all large fruits
• Mini bags of cotton candy dressed as Candi Cotton - you could buy in a large bag and wrap around little lollipop sticks, then bag it as a pop
• Cake Pops dressed as Lolli Poppins

The sky is the limit!!

Now, to be fair, most of my students love Shopkins... I don't see why not use some and all of these in my classroom next time I promise them a party for behavior.

Post your pictures below... I want to see what you come up with at your own Shopkins Party.

Please, please, please... leave a comment that you are using the download and if you can come back and post your pictures in the comment section after you hold your own Shopkins Party!!

Here is the link - Shopkins Party Download

Rainbow Fish Craftivities

Phew! The year is over and we are still working! Summer School with the little kiddies has proved to be quite challenging, but rewarding. 

Tired and all we are helping those little ones make the transition to full day school next September. 

This week we are working on an Ocean unit that includes the reading of several bilingual books, all of which lend themselves to great cross-curricular activities. 

My favorite among all is a rainbow fish made with plates and bleeding art tissue paper! 

Finge

Izquierda o derecha?

Gracias a la vieja costumbre de enseñar a los niños de habla inglesa a reconocer la izquierda y la derecha usando las manos, me encontré con esta manera de darle un nuevo, y mejor uno a la misma técnica en español. 

En inglés, la clave es hacer una L con los dedos de ambas manos, la mano que muestre la L correctamente es la izquierda, por "Left". Por consiguiente, la mano que no muestra la L correctamente, se "descalifica" como izquierda y es la derecha. 

Este método se usa para enseñar las direcciones, e implica que el niño conozca las letras.

En el caso del español, me ha servido de manera inversa. Los peques que ya conocen cuál es su mano izquierda, o derecha, pero aun no han logrado dominar el reconocimiento de las letras, especialmente quienes por desarrollo o dislexia, confunden la "b" y la "d", se han beneficiado con el uso de esta técnica. Y cuándo digo "inversa", lo digo en más de una condición. Primeramente, la mano que corresponde a la letra correcta es la derecha, por su correspondiente sonido inicial "d". Además, los alumnos requieren saber cuál es su derecha e izquierda, previo a la actividad. Y finalmente, las letras hechas con las manos son minúsculas, cuando la actividad en inglés las requiere mayúsculas.

Para enfatizar el reconocimiento de ambas letras, cuando el alumno está activamente mostrando las letras en sus manos, el educador puede trazar la letra que se está buscando o estudiando, en la espalda del menor. Simplemente, se dice el nombre o sonido de la letra al mismo tiempo que se escribe en la espalda con el dedo o el borrador de un lápiz. La espalda se convierte en el lienzo y el cerebro transfiere la información como si fuera en el papel.

Cabe recordar que no se busca hacer la letra inicial de las palabras, "I" o "D", por izquierda y derecha, sino que se busca identificar cuál de las dos letras representadas es la "d", y cuál no lo es, y por consiguiente es la "b".

¡Espero que esto les sirva de ayuda con sus nenes de intervención!

A Twist on One-on-one correspondence

This trick seemed to work with the kiddos!

I had the moving a counter to follow a number line and figure out how to find the missing numbers on the worm card.

It was a perfect move!

I got the worm cards from the amazing From The Pond!

Flash Freebie!!!

A little present for you to start the year off Monkeying around... 

I made these labels for my friend and co-worker, who was looking for a classroom theme that she could modify for her classroom needs. Since she teaches all in Spanish, it is always difficult to find decorations already made that are in other language than English. She asked for Monkeys and Bananas, and that's just what she got!

She loves it!!

Here it is for you, absolutely free for 24 hours!

Starting on: Jan 11, 2015 12:00 PM CT

Click on the image

Or grab it here:

El Tesoro del saber on Teacher's Notebook - Editable Labels

Happy Teaching!