We All Need a Little {Brain Break}!

Hey there! I’m super excited to share my latest DIY project with you! It has to do with one of my favorite parts of the day… brain breaks!

We all get to that point during the day when we just need a BREAK! Students, teacher, moms, we all do! This past year, I remembered that I wanted to have brain break sticks one night at midnight, so I quickly grabbed some popsicle sticks, wrote on them with Sharpie, and called it a night.  Needless to say, I HATED how they looked, so they were used a few times, and then I never wanted to use them again! Redoing them has been on my to-do list for a while, and I finally decided to move it to the top of the list.  I stopped at my classroom and brought home my not-so-cute brain break sticks.  Here’s what they looked like:

Clearly, I was very tired when I made these! Geez, it hurts my eyes to even look at them!

I was looking through my pins today to try and figure out how I wanted to jazz these up when I stumbled upon Miss Kindergarten‘s post about her “I’m Done, Now What” station.  She explained how she made her cute popsicle sticks for that, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do! So I broke out the neon scrapbook paper, mod podge, scissors, and popsicle sticks, and got to work!

I traced the popsicle sticks and cut out what felt like A MILLION templates.  Then, I mod podged the scrapbook paper on the front and back of each popsicle stick.  I let that dry for a bit while I whipped up some brain break labels on the computer.  I made them using PowerPoint, and they are the perfect size for jumbo craft sticks!  Here’s a FREE copy for you! There’s even a page of blanks so you can write in your own brain breaks.

I cut all these out, which was a little easier with my handy dandy mini paper cutter, and mod podged them on the front of the popsicle sticks.  Then, I had to let those dry for a while.

Yes, they are drying in the box that my brand new Erin Condren planner came in!!!! (Can you tell I’m in love with E. C.?)

After that, I jazzed up my new favorite ZEBRA bucket (thanks, Theresa!) with some pretty ribbon, and voila!

What do ya think?! I’m in love! I may use my Cricut tomorrow to write “bran breaks” on the front.  I’ll post a new picture if I do! How do you organize brain breaks in your classroom?