Halloween 2014: Fairies, Cops, and Robbers

Each year for Halloween, my mom likes to plan a theme for all the costumes of the grandkids. This year, the theme was cops and robbers. When I first ran the idea across Big E, she was not thrilled. She was pretty insistent  that if there were no sparkles, wings, princess, or girly things she wanted no part of it. We compromised and let her pick another costume to wear to various other Halloween events, and then use the robber costume for family trick-or-treating. The compromise worked, and she picked to be a fairy. Tinkerbelle to be exact. So, this year I made two costumes for each of my two girls in addition to the costumes that I made for customers (Check out some customer orders here!).

First up, we have the fairies. Big E wanted to be just like Tinkerbelle. We picked pink for Little E, since she doesn't really care too much right now. We told her she was Rosetta, but she said she was, "Pink Tink." Basically, I used the bodice of a princess dress pattern that I have to make the top. I hand-shaped the petals and attached tulle on the bottom. I used this free pattern from Create Kids Couture to make leg warmers for Big E. These were the costumes we wore to ballet, ZooBoo, and trick-or-treating on Halloween night.

Do you like my chalkboard sign? I saw it on Pinterest, and I thought it was a cute to leave out with the candy while we were trick-or-treating.

Now, on to the cops and robbers theme. My mom saw an idea on Pinterest, and that is how it all began. It was a big secret until the day of the reveal. There were lots of guesses on my facebook page, but no one got it right. We took lots of pictures that highlighted the theme well. Doesn't everyone drive around town looking for metal gates that look like prison bars? Well, there is a metal gate...and it was at a cemetery. A friend, who is a policeman, let us take pictures with his car too. Then, we visited a lot of our friends and family. Big E kept making "mean, robber" faces the whole night. So funny!

The girls both got super girly, super poofy dresses. I bought a pattern that will make a perfect party dress, and I plan to use it again in the future because it fit so well. The bottom portion of the dress had to be adjusted to fit our theme. I made tutu's to wear under the dresses so they would really stand out. I used this tutorial to figure out how to make them as big as possible....Let's just say a size 6 tutu has about 18 yards of tulle! I didn't add a ribbon to mine since I just used it as an underskirt, but I'm thinking of adding the tutu's to my shop if you are interested. My younger nephew wore a striped shirt paired with those cheap gloves and hats from the store. All the robbers had face paint masks painted on to complete their look. My older nephew had a policeman costume.  All the kids used shoe bags with a $ painted on with fabric markers. 

Learning: Big E in a Bigger World

     Big E is getting ready to go to Kindergarten! I can't believe it. When we registered her, we were given a packet of things each student could work on before coming to the screen at the end of the summer. Examples of things in the packet include the alphabet, counting to twenty, and writing name. Out of about 50 things, there were only 2 things Big E didn't know! (Thank you PBS, Preschool teachers, and lots of other people!) The two things were her address and phone number. Since the screening is next week, I thought I should find some way to teach her these things.
     I went to my go-to site for searching for creative ideas; Pinterest. A couple hours and distractions later, I finally picked something. I made some changes to the original post I saw to fit our needs. I really needed to include the address and phone number on our project, so I added them. I also wanted Big E to practice writing. I think every five year old needs help there!
    To get ready, I Googled images of my city, state, country, etc. I copied them onto a document and printed them out. I also printed a map of our neighborhood for our address. I let Big E cut them apart. While she was cutting, I cut some construction paper to make our flip book. To do this, I cut about an inch off of the second to last page, two inches off the next one, three inches off the following page, etc. Then I stacked the pages (longest on the bottom) and punch two holes in the top. I put some yarn through the holes to hold the book together. Here's the picture of the final book, but you can see what the stacked pages look like.

     Once everything was ready, we got to work. First Big E wrote the category on each page: My phone number, My address, My city, etc. Next, she sorted the pictures that went with each category and glued them onto the correct page. Finally, she wrote her address, city, etc and glued those onto the correct pages. Here is a collage showing you what most of the pages looked like when she got them finished.

     There are so many ways to use this flip book! We talked about how the planet is the biggest page and it's the biggest part of where we are. A phone is a tiny object in a house, in a city, in a state, etc. 

     Writing your address one time is not enough to learn it. Big E already knew the name of our street, so we just need to learn the numbers. Here are some other ideas we are using to  learn  address and phone numbers:

Turn it into a song or here I love using songs. My kids really respond to this. If they can memorize all of "Let it Go", they can memorize their address :)

make up a story using the numbers

write letters to far away friends