Heart-Day Par-Tay

I haven't been in Louie's class at all year, so when I secured a babysitter in Grandma I volunteered to be a part of the kindergarten class' Valentine's Day party. My job was to come up with a craft.

I saw some really great deals on oriental trading company for Valentine crafts. They fit the theme; they were magnets, so they were actually a useful craft; and they had bears in them, so they weren't such a "girly" project.

But they wouldn't get here until after the party was already over.

So I went searching on the world wide web and found this great craft where you make a bee pencil topper with googly eyes (and who doesn't like googly eyes?!) and on the antennae you put two hearts that say "Bee" and "Mine."

All the items for the craft were found easily and last night I did a trial run of the bee and also made some rice krispies for a party snack. You are well aware of how terrible I am at making these marshmallow treats as witnessed in Benny's 3rd birthday "Christmas Bush." I am getting better, is all I'm going to say. Unfortunately, this post has no pictures but I will describe as best I can.

In my mind I thought, how cool would it be if I could get the rice krispies to sparkle with sugar crystals! I wanted to do something to make them special for the holiday and we had some pink sugar crystals in the pantry. I mixed them in with the melted marshmallow and...it made it all pink. Pepto pink, it was that bad. Oh well. They were shaped well (very pretty cubes) and there was enough for the class. Probably extra marshmallows were thrown in, so I'm sure they tasted good! Reflecting on the matter, I probably should have just sprinkled some on top of them after I put them in the pan. Benny thought otherwise. For his St. Patrick's Day party I'm volunteering for he wants me to do the same thing with the green crystals. Hey, what can I say? I know what kids like.

On to the craft: my little prototype was looking good as I attempted to instruct the kids on how to create the pencil topper. It didn't go so well for the kindergartners. Who knew that my generic glue holds better than the fancy Elmer's they have at school? Googly eyes rolling everywhere, paper hearts sliding off of antennae, and I had another mother helping out at the table who kept laughing. Ah, the story of my life. Great idea in the head, doesn't always do so well when executed. We ended up securing everything with scotch tape, which made the bees look pretty shoddy, but the kids loved them. Again, the googly eyes made everything funner.

Besides the bumble bees, they also made "stained glass" hearts and played a bean bag game and heart bingo. Afterward, their teacher read them a really cute story called Roses are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink and then came the treats. Wowza! They had a lot of sweets. There were four different kinds of heart cookies along with the pink rice krispies, red jello packs, strawberries and grapes. The party was in the morning, so that poor teacher was stuck in a room with 24 crazies! (The kids did put the leftovers in a baggie in their cubby for treats at home.)

I'm so glad I was able to come in for the party. It was neat to see Louie with his classmates, see a little bit of what goes on during the school day, and I even made friends with some of the other mothers! I just need to brush up on my craft and baking skills. Hopefully by the time Meredith's in kindergarten!