Birthdays

So last year was my first year teaching Kindergarten.  The year before I was a second grade teacher.  The other K teachers at my school had all these cute headbands and such for student birthdays...and my kids got a certificate.  So, while I sit at home this summer watching Netflix, I decided to do something to step up my "birthday game" for my kiddos this year.  I ran across these ADORABLE and (now this is key) EASY to make b-day headbands from Kindergarten Kindergarten.  Check them out and the super easy instructions here:  http://www.kindergartenkindergarten.com/2012/06/birthday-crowns.html

Anyway....this was a great use for all my scrap card stock I had laying around that I just couldn't stand to throw away.  I am still working on cutesy-fying them (my glitter glue is at school, which is locked), but I am so excited with how they turned out so far!

All you do to make it into a crown is staple it to a sentence strip!

I also ran across these on Pinterest that I am working on:

I've got the balloons cut (Thanks, Cricut!) and instead of using Pixy Stix (because I'm scared of our school nutrition rules) I have a whole bunch of sparkly pencils I'm going to use instead.  So that's a crown and a balloon/pencil thingy for each kid's birthday for a grand total of $0 (already had the scrap paper and the pencils!).  Same cost as the homemade certificate I had last year but oh so much more fun!  What do you do for student birthdays in your class?