Starting off the school year with a BANG

Okay, it wasn't a literal bang.  Well, there were some of those, I did have 4 boys with me yesterday after all. We were privileged yesterday to have an opportunity - the boys and I got to spend the LAST DAY before school started with my niece, Little Lou (7) and nephew Bugsy (5).  We decided to do it up right and with my boys (ages 4, 2.5, and 10 months) have a party!

Because we had a back to school party, Manasseh was convinced that we HAD to start homeschool today. Or last night would be even better.  He just couldn't WAIT to start preschool and is looking forward to the rest of the week's adventures in preschool.

Here it is - our back to school party (on the cheap):

We started the day with tie dye.  I didn't get ANY pictures of this because I handled the dyes - Elizabeth, I want pictures.  Cost for 6 shirts and 1 dress?  Less than $10, the dye was about $5 on clearance after Halloween - the clothes ALL came from Salvation Army, most were half price.  I like Salvation Army!

While Azariah slept, I took pictures of the "big" kids.  Then a "quick" trip to Walmart and a local thrift shop.  Okay, you know that "quick" with 5 kids ages 7 and under is not really very quick.

While I made a special party lunch, the kids decorated frames.  Bugsy and Manasseh painted.

Little Lou chose a frame with stickers.

Cassius wanted to use markers on this frog frame.  Total cost for the 4 frames was less than $2 on clearance at various times through the year - they were cluttering my craft bin.

While we were at Walmart I printed 1 picture of each of the "big" kids.  It was super easy to crop them and add words to them on the "instant" machine (by the way you can't do this until after 9am and "instant" means about 5 minutes).  They're not the greatest quality either.  These cost 28c each.  Can you spot the error?

Lunch - Totinos pizza - these kids ate like birds, I bought 2 but they only finished 1 tiny pizza - price? $1.36.  Cantaloupe - $1.50, they ate half, bananas and carrots from my sister's fridge.  And - they drank water.

Azariah enjoyed pizza too.  He was pretty messy by the end of this dining experience.

My boys need naps after lunch.  We put in a $5 Walmart movie and all the boys laid down for an hour (mostly).

More super cheap and easy projects - I had 2 old tshirts that were destined for the donation bin.  Cut into strips they made great braided belts.  We picked up a couple of old belts at local thrift stores so we would have buckles.  Grand total of this project?  About 55 cents.

Little Lou's belt has the coolest buckle!  She was able to do most of the braiding herself.

Bugsy needed more help.  His buckle wasn't as cool - it's hard to find cool boy buckles sometimes.

Little Lou had enough tshirt left over to make a quick bracelet!

We spray painted wooden blocks (about 60c for the set at the thrift shop).  Once they were dry Little Lou and Bugsy used Elmer's glue and water to Mod Podge their pictures onto the blocks.  Total cost for this project was close to $1.50.

Perler beads are fun and use so many great skills.  Manasseh and Little Lou both spent quite a bit of time with them.  I bought a big container of them for $3.33 on clearance at Hobby Lobby.

Our final project was bleach pen shirts with "broncos" on them.  I am a terrible artist.  Little Lou helped me design a bronco head (this is their school mascot).  The bleach pen was the most expensive part of the project - about $2.50 at Menards.  The sweatshirt was 40c and the tshirt was about 20c.  

Sweatshirts take longer to bleach than tshirts - much longer.  Little Lou's shirt didn't turn out quite as bright as Bugsy's.  We'll do another one for her (in purple) as soon as we can find a shirt.

That's it.  Our back to school party.  What did you do to get your kids ready for school?  Have they gone back yet?  What other great ideas do you have that we can add next year?