One Saturday night a few weekends ago, something strange happened.
Little, fluffy critters started appearing on my desk. I watched them appearing, but they started to disappear when my cat came up and started meow'ing at them. So I spent this weekend taming them so I could bring them into class for you today. Now remember, when they come out you all have to be really, really quiet. Otherwise they start to disappear.
Thank you, Pinterest. While on my prac, I quickly put these together for my year 1 class- to keep them (...in theory) quiet while they did their handwriting. They absolutely loved them! The hardest part was to get them (the year 1's) not to play with them instead of doing their work, or to believe for a few minutes that they were little critters (or aliens) which appeared on my desk rather than pom-poms with eyes.
They're simply made of pompoms (1" diameter, if I remember rightly), little pre-cut foam hearts and googely eyes (6mm). Putting together a set of 30 was reasonably cheap (around $10) and quick to assemble - having the pre-cut foam hearts did make it so much easier, though it does mean I have a good 220 to use...
Turns out finding a cute storage container was harder than I thought - it couldn't be a boring, rectangular Tupperware container, and it also had to be plastic (small children and all). A good friend of mine spotted this one while we were at Target and it's perfect. Of course I had to decorate it a little bit.
I'm definitely looking forward to using my critters in another classroom soon!
See you soon!