star of the week

At little guy's school they have a "Star of the Week" program. During this week the "Star" has his/her picture displayed and he/she gets to be the special student. On the last school day of that week his/her Mommy comes to the class, does an activity with the students, brings food, and gives out goodie bags/presents. It's a big deal for the little ones. Several weeks ago, it was little guy's turn at "Star of the Week". For his party I planned and prepared well in advance. Here's what we did:

First, we sat in the circle and showed some of little guy's pictures. For the activity, I read one of little guy's favorite books, 123 Sesame Street. And we just happen to have a plush Elmo, Bert, and Ernie, so I acted out the story using them as puppets. Next, I prepared an Elmo stick puppet. I made these by finding a picture of Elmo on one of my favorite kid's websites, coloringbookfun. I cut out the Elmo and mounted him on card paper which I then trimmed around Elmo. I glued on two wiggly eyes to make it fun and also glued on a craft stick (which is actually b/t the two layers of paper) to give it a puppet kind of feel. Little guy even helped with the gluing. I prepared all of this at home because I only got 30-40 mins with the children and also, they're only 3 yrs old. So then they got to color Elmo red, which just happened to be the color they were learning that week. Then when it was food time, we played an Elmo DVD for the children to watch while they munched on homemade mini-pizzas, mini hot dog rolls, and mini cinnamon rolls. They washed that all down with some apple juice.

As for the gifts, I just LOVE making goodie bags. So I knew I had to make them. But here's the thing. I'm anti-cheapy toys. It's not that I'm snobby but I believe that cheapy toys are a waste of money. Sure, you think it's a dollar here, a dollar there, but when all those toys break (and they will, pretty quickly), you could have bought something a lot more durable. However, being anti-cheapy toy does not mean I have to buy expensive toys either. There are great things out there for only $1 and sometimes less. You just have to take the time to find them. Goodie bags are so fun to make in the US. I find great things at the Dollar stores, in the Target $1 bins, crafts stores, etc. However, here in Saudi it was much more challenging. So here's what I came up with:

I found these clear back packs for about $1 a piece. Inside I filled it with a mini water color set (I found a 36 pack of these at ToysRUs and am keeping the extras for prizes for students and some are in my emergency gift box), a coloring book (I got 20 of these for about $1), sticker strips which I cut up from a sticker book, a balloon, Oreos, Lays Ketchup potato chips, a cupcake, and some tootsie rolls (courtesy of Grandma in the US). Then I placed them into these:

Gifts bags, Cars for boys and Hello Kitty for girls (there are 12 boys and only 4 girls in little guy's class), complete with labels for names to be written on.

All in all it was a great experience. Little guy was very happy during my visit. And the children LOVED their bags. So that equals success. ;)

My plan for next year? Stock up on cute, non-junky, yet inexpensive goodies while in the US for next year's "Star of the Week". ;)