January 2012 – Patties Classroom

Snowglobe Stories & Art

Just for fun we did some activities with Snow Globes! I have a collection of Snow Globes I put out in the wintertime at my house. So I bring a few into class the day we read
The Snow Globe Family.

This cute picture had an “Angry Bird” flying overhead….hehe….so cute!

Some of my snowglobes are large and have snow scenes inside but others are just snowmen I have a Valentine one that has a heart inside and snows red glitter.

We all brainstorm and come up with ideas on the board for characters to write adventures in a snowglobe for writing workshop.

And we watch the PIXAR Youtube about a poor snowman stuck inside a cold snowglobe. It is really cute.
I added it a little further down this post.

Description under our Bulletin Board….

This author does the “Fancy Nancy” stories and Nina Ballerina series too…..

Here are our finished Snow Globe Stories….out in the hallway ….I typed up their titles and
we glued them onto the Snowglobe black bases….

Creative Snowglobe stories for writing workshop…..

I loved some of their cool illustrations too…..

We shared our stories after we were done…..and used our best expression….

Lots of stories were about winter activities….some were about the
character wanting to escape his snowglobe…


Here’s a snowglobe sticker art project from		Oriental Trading

This will be Super fun! We will start by reading The Snow Globe Family by Jane O’Connor who also wrote the Fancy Nancy and Nina Ballerina series of stories. Start out by having the kids talk about their own families and who they want in their story. Then we’ll do a brainstorm and list the main characters, and of course the setting of their story will be inside a snowglobe. But there must be some sort of problem that happens. Write a list of 12 different kinds of winter problems that could happen inside of a snow globe.

Reading The Snowglobe Family is where we will start the activity…..

A great website that had lots of neat pictures of kids’ snowglobe art was HERE at Faithful Attempt Blogspot.

We are working on using really interesting describing words….and some adverbs too!

Can you find some $100 dollar words in any of these?

We went through the entire writing process….

I forgot to have the kids add some silver glitter glue for snowflakes….

That would add a lot to the artwork I bet…

Now, the problem will have to be very creative… as a class we brainstorm problems a child could have being stuck in a snowglobe…boredom, snowball fights, ice skating or skiing competitions, making a new kind of hot chocolate drink, sledding down a too-steep mountain, building a snowman that comes alive, reading by the fire that keeps going out, or maybe getting sick of winter? Maybe the problems could be something they want that they see outside the globe, but they can’t have it….kind of like how the Little Mermaid wanted legs to go live on land. Then the kids will have to come up with their own solutions.

The kids also learned that they can capitalize Title Words…..

So they all made up Titles for their Stories…..

You should have heard them discussing and sharing creative titles….so funny!

I definitely have the best job in the world….I get to crack up hourly at the
funny things they say and do…..gotta love em….

Great job by everyone!

Pretty Snowglobe Art projects…..

They all worked hard. going through the sloppy copy, editing, and then
doing their final copies and illustrations…..

We have 28 cute snowglobe stories out in the hall with darling art…..We used sharpie markers to outline
to make our artwork stand out a bit more…that is a trick I learned from an art teacher….

We drew a favorite scene from our stories cut from 7 inch circles on white construction paper. Then we put a black “holder” on the back which is just a giant black triangle.

A Pixar Youtube short movie we’ll watch to get our creative juices flowing. It is very cute.

I encourage the kids to write about something funny that actually happened at their house (losing something important, a mess that was made, a family outing to a favorite place, somebody’s special day, etc.)

Finished stories with Titles typed up and glued on the black triangles of the snowglobes….

This is a great winter bulletin board. And it’s a lot more fun than the January “Here are our New Year’s Goals” bulletin board.

A craft I thought was cute but kinda too much work I saw on the Martha Stewart Website HERE. It is a snowglobe made from small baby food and olive jars, glitter, glycerin and distilled water.

Ideas are from the Clever Feather Art blog

These were pictures I got inspiration from….but I liked our class’ snowglobes the best….

Happy New Year everybody!

Pop Up Books

We finished our Ocean Animal Pop Up Books awhile ago and I forgot to post them here on the blog. So although they’ve been done a few weeks, here are the cute pop up books we made.

Ocean Animal Pop Up Books….

We read books, made lots of lists of facts…..

Then made the covers for our books…..

Then we colored a page of ocean animals and started to write up some of the facts….

Everyone chose different animals…..

And wrote up whatever facts they found….

We got lots of cool information from these Weekly Readers and Scholastic News Science Editions….
The best money your education dollar can buy in my opinion….

Then we did backgrounds for each of the 4 to 5 pages…..

Some did 7 animals….some did 10 …..

They turned out nice I thought…..

Our Ocean Animals Pop Up Books….

Whales, dolphins, sharks, octopus, jellyfish, sea stars….etc……

Hope you enjoyed them…..

Martin Luther King Day

We honor a great American hero today; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

My students learned about him, wrote about him, and drew pictures of him…..

Martin Luther King pictures….

2nd graders imagining Dr. King as a pastor giving a sermon in church….

Dr. King giving a speech for America….

We all think Martin Luther King was a great man…

We read a big book on Martin Luther King….Read a timeline of facts about him… and read 3 Scholastic Newspapers about him….then we wrote our own dreams for the world…..

Here are some activities we did last year for Martin Luther King’s birthday.

So we do a portrait of Dr. King and put it on the bulletin board along with writing projects by the students about what their “dreams” for the world would be. It’s always funny to see things like: “I dream that there will be no more bad guys”….and stuff like that. But it’s good to get kids to synthesize what they learn in a new way. So I do it for that reason. Hey, world peace isn’t just for the Miss America Pageant you know!

Kids don’t like littering, war, or bullying…..there are some things we can do at 7 years old to make the world better!

They can stand up to bullying at school…..they can pick up litter where they find it….they can make the world better!

A picture of a sign during Martin Luther King’s time….they kids all see how unfair it is….why didn’t the adults see it?

It is always amazing to me that the kids are shocked by the unfairness they see in actual primary source photos of the time. When I show them the pictures of “colored bathroom only” signs in the book, or the “blacks sit to the back of the bus” signs, and I ask them, “Do you guys think this is fair?” they always will unitedly chorus in the negative. It is amazing that the adults of that time didn’t think it unfair.

I like this pretty stained glass window in the background of the church….and notice Dr. King holding a flag? Cool!

Kids know what the problems in our world are, it shows up in their own creative writing….

We wrote about the example Dr. King set for us and how we can all make the world a better place too.

This student thought “puppy mills” should stop…..I think that is cute….we didn’t talk about puppy mills per se,
but it goes to show that kids really do think, and learn from topics of the day they hear on the news.

Happy Birthday Dr. King. You showed us that one person in this world really CAN make a difference.

Making Giant Paper Snowflakes

A Tutorial is HERE at Paper Zone Blog for how to do a cool, giant paper snowflake. I used 8 1/2 x 11 copy paper sheets and had each student do 1/6 of the snowflake. Another one with cool photos is HERE at A Cup of Calm.

A Cup of Calm had cool pics to guide me through it!

You start by using a perfect square of paper, just like in Japanese paper folding, or doing a square snowflake.
Then you fold twice. The side where there is a single fold you cut 4 lines almost to the edge, that line up with the side with the long side of the triangle.

Don’t these snowflakes turn out awesome?

Fold the square diagonally to form a triange. Then fold that triangle in half again to form a smaller triangle. Unfold carefully. Attach the 2 outside tips of the square to each other in front. Then attach the next tips in back with tape. Then the next tips in front with tape. That the last inner tips in back with tape. Do this 4 or 5 more times. Attach the ends together with a stapler. You will have a 5 sectioned star snowflake or a 6 sectioned snowflake. hang up in the center of your room for quite a breathtaking display.

Just staple all the 6 parts together to form the snowflake! All Done!

A fun interactive snowflake making website with magic scissors that cut a new snowflake every time is called Snowflake Barkleys.com HERE is the link. It’s a cool and fun website for the kids to get an idea how to cut a snowflake.

Penguin Acrostics and Penguin Footprint Art

Well, we are done with our cute footprint Penguins. They turned out so hilarious looking. Here’s a sampling of our Works of Art ….

The kids added all the embellishments….

We used washable poster paint for most everything…..

Then we added some PENGUIN ACROSTIC POETRY to our penguins. I think the easiest way to do
Acrostic Poems is to do a brainstorm on the board. Then they have a brainstorm of words to choose from to do their poems.

Using P at the top…then an E….then an N…..and separate each letter with a marker line. Then have the kids come up to the whiteboard and add words or you write the words they call out…….(interactive writing). It’s quick and fun.

Here’s our Acrostic Poetry Bulletin Board…..I’m going to add the footprint penguins to it on Monday…

After the footprints (and black thumbprints) were dry….we added white bellies….

We carefully painted on “potato shaped” bellies and painted our fingers white then stamped them onto the black
thumbprint for the baby bellies….

Then we did the scarves and hats….and when all were dry we used black and orange markers for the babies’ faces and waddling feet…..The penguin beaks are orange construction paper triangles….and the wiggly eyes we glued on too….

Here we are painting our feet at a center table…the kids really helped each other!

It took about an hour to finish just the black footprint of each student…..

It was a fun art project. But painting feet and then washing them off was no picnic. And they all said “Wow, that’s COOOOLD!” I guessed it would be…..hehe……

Put a piece of butcher paper or drop cloth under the painters…..and have a bin of water for stepping into to wash off…. and paper towels for trying off those little cold feet!

Others were writing while finished writers were painting…while finished painters went to centers….
It was controlled chaos for an hour!

I’m going to back these cute Penguins with black paper. I added glitter glue snowflakes, and the kids added orange, triangle beaks and wiggly eyes after painting on their hats and scarves.

I thought the gold paint turned out pretty…..as did the little thumbprint baby penguins…..

The feet were hard to paint and print…some of those toes got a little squished….

And they had to let them dry before painting the white bellies (or fingerprinted bellies on the babies) but they did a great job I thought…..I just let them do their own thing with the paints….and nobody really went too crazy!

I set up a “PENGUIN BOOK CENTER” Where kids can read all about the many different types of
Penguins found mostly in the South Pole. They thought it was interesting that none are found in the North Pole.

A site with lots of Penguin Activity Pages is HERE at Kidzone.

RIDDLE: What’s black & white and goes round and round?
A: A penguin stuck in a revolving door.

The kids painted their own designer hats and scarves….from red and gold to purple with polka dots!

Then they wrote their Penguin Acrostic Poems……

They turned out lovely…..

We also read a play from the book TACKY THE PENGUIN. It is my favorite Children’s Book….
Even after the hundreds of books I’ve read. It teaches kids that even though somebody is different, they
can be special in their own way. Tacky becomes a hero in his little Iceberg village….. Link HERE at Reading Lady if you want a copy of the Reader’s Theater Play. The kids loved being the characters.

My Favorite Children’s Book…..Helen Lester has written a series of Tacky books for kids…..all are darling and

send a great message about accepting others as they are and being a good friend…..

A unit using Tacky the Penguin and some story frames for writing your own Penguin Story with a problem and solution can be found HERE at Trinity Education. I used some of the ideas last year when the kids wrote their own penguin stories. Link HERE for Penguins on Parade if you want to see some of our finished Penguin Stories.