While most of us don’t have enough space at home to dedicate to a true home school classroom space, it doesn’t mean you can’t work with what you have to make it comfortable and cute! To get them excited for the upcoming school year, my kids painted their own pencil cup from a cheap dollar store apple box find.
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Some of my readers might already be back to school, whatever that might mean this year, but here in NJ we don’t start until after labor day. To get my kids prepared and excited about a hybrid or possibly all remote situation, I wanted to create a fun “classroom” atmosphere at home and get them involved in the process.
Last week I visited the Dollar Tree and came home with these wooden apple cups that looked like the perfect accessory for a personal pencil cup at their work stations!
I knew they’ve be into it as they were immediately asking to paint them once I told them my idea. I pulled out our favorite DecoArt Americana paint that I know gives good coverage on wood surfaces and let them get creative.
Both decided to paint one apple side with a red apple and green leaf and the other a green apple with a red leaf. :)
Don’t you love waiting kids paint and their concentration faces?
In the end, their apple pencil cups were perfect. The paint provided good coverage with only one coat and it dried fairly fast on this thin wood.
Since I’m trying to set up their own space in our dining room, I thought a little personalization was necessary and added their names using some permanent vinyl cut with my Cricut Maker.
We’ve already been putting our pencil cups to use when working on their summer workbooks we’ve been plowing through this summer.
If you’re looking for activity books for the kids, make sure to check out the Summer Brain Quest series which basically bridges them from one year to the next with recaps of content learned as well as a little peak of things that they will work on in the next grade. Brielle has been working on the 1st to 2nd grade book while Hailey has the Pre-K to K book. I don’t think are “summer” specific so they’d be good for the fall also!
Now our at home school space is a little more cute and ready for my 2nd grader and kindergartner this September with the new personal apple pencil cup they each painted themselves!
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