Patties Classroom – Page 20 – Good Stuff for Elementary School Teachers

St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun Traps

We are playing this fun game in P.E. this week. It’s like 4 corners only there are 6 charms! Similar
icons are put around the room in 6 areas. Kids choose and area, I roll the dice, and the kids in the one landing on top
are OUT! We keep rolling till we have one winner who gets a little gummy bear treat.

We are also working on making Leprechauns, and pots of gold, and writing about a Person We Treasure.

They go nicely with our beautiful rainbow pots of gold. They are made from 1 x 12 inch strips of red, orange, yellow, green blue and purple paper then glued to a black pot. We added a clip art picture of gold pieces to the top.

Then we wrote Leprechaun similes…they are a type of metaphor. A Leprechaun is as _____ as a _____. If I caught one I would_____ and my 3 wishes would be_______. They turned out cute. I’ll post some of them soon.

Here’s the letter I sent home for the Leprechaun Trap inventions assignment….

For St. Patrick’s Day we made some Leprechaun Trap!!. I hope some of these can catch a leprechaun for one of the kids!

This was a cool obstacle course the little guy would travel through before getting trapped in the box.

I loved this one so much. A lot of time went into painting pictures for the walls
of this “All You Can Eat Buffet!”

Wouldn’t you love to go to a Leprechaun buffet? Yeah….me too! There
were flashing green lights inside as well as lovely tables and chairs to sit and dine!

HERE at One Charming P arty is a cute candy bag topper for St. Patrick’s Day. It’s cute so go check it out.

Cute and glittery tube trap….walk up the ladder, slide down into the tube….gotcha!

Do you think he’ll trap one in the big, green, bag? I hope so!

This one looked similar to a mailbox. Super cute! Loved the scary signs too.

Here was another one that lit up with lights….so glittery and cool, but you KNOW those
leprechauns aren’t going to obey the signs posted, are they?

HERE at Family Fun is a cute St. Patrick’s Day Treasure Hunt printable. It has a rhyme for the first clue to go look under your bed. I think I might try this for my grandkids to do next time they come over. It sounds really fun.

This one had some real Lucky Charms cereal added to the black pot….lots of enticing stickers too….very cute!

Loved the artistic rainbow and the Lucky Charms guy too!

In this Labyrinth of tape one might get caught…..mmmhmmm……

Or this Disneyland playland for Leprechauns! Look at all the holes he might fall through!

Loved the name on the fun house…..Rainbow Palace….so cute!

We decided to have lots of signs that said the opposite of what we wanted….because we all
know that sneaky leprechauns don’t follow signs or rules, do they?

Loved the wooden ladder and how that tiny guy will just slide right down into a TRAP!
Good Work!

Just because it is tiny, doesn’t mean it can’t trap a Leprechaun!

We loved the shamrocks made of pipe cleaners on this one, and the creative ladder. This one
also had some Lucky Charms Cereal to entice a little green man to come fall inside!

Climb on up, slide right down. Don’t pay attention to the Do Not Enter sign!

This was a real mousetrap! Climb up, crawl through the tunnel, then , OOPS! Trapped in the tube!

You can’t even see it but there is a secret hole under all that green grass on top, good job!

Pretty rainbow slide and lots of cute stickers too, not to mention the advertising of GOLD!

This was a pretty silvery trap with a black pot of gold on top!

Do you think the pot or the green carnation will trip him up? I wonder…..

This cute girl did a Leprechaun dollhouse, complete with bed, table and chairs. She’s gonna
keep him for awhile to decide on 3 perfect wishes……

We had a great time inventing traps for Leprechauns for St. Patrick’s Day! Wish us luck, or for a bunch of lucky 3 wishes….or……well….. something like that. Anyways, have a Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Dr. Seuss Day Activities

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HAPPY DR. SEUSS DAY!! What’s YOUR favorite Dr. Seuss Book?
So…..today we had so much fun celebrating Dr. Seuss Day.
Our PTA showed a Dr. Seuss movie and gave out cake and popcorn for the kids in the gym.

In school we voted to find out which is our Favorite Dr. Seuss Book. We did a CLASS GRAPH! Then we had a book exchange and a Read-a-Thon in our Pajamas and with pillows and blankets!

I found 5 writing topics to choose from for the week. Here are the choices…..taken from the blog….Minds in Bloom. They actually had 20 ideas but we are choosing only 5 for our journal writing on Thursday…..

Make a list of things you could do to cheer up the Grinch.
The Cat in the Hat is lending you Thing 1 and Thing 2 for the day. What will you do with them?
Pretend that you get to choose one Dr. Seuss book that will be translated into every language and given to every single child on the planet. Which book do you choose? Why?
Create a new animal for If I Ran the Zoo. Describe your animal in detail, give it a name, and illustrate it.
Choose a Dr. Seuss character and pretend that you will spend the day together. Create a schedule for the day.

We made in art some woven and colorful fish from the rolls of butcher paper in the school. We had 1 inch strips of paper and we cut strips in our giant 1 foot fish. We are learning about measurement so that’s why we did 1 foot fish with 1 inch strips to weave in and out. The cute caption reads “One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

Dr. Seuss Day Activities in the Gym were fun!

We did this fun activity; guess how many swedish fish are in the jar of candy!

Here’s our One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish….

Another idea on Pinterest was to add red fish (or swedish fish) to blue jello in clear cups
that read “One fish, two fish, red, fish blue fish”. Cute idea for next year!

A fun handprint card made into Thing 1 and Thing 2 that I thought we could try for art this week. It looks like a ton of work but I know the kids will like it and they can do it and maybe make up a poem about their Thing 1 or Thing 2 getting into some trouble on Dr. Seuss Day!

Thing 1 and 2 are waiting for some faces! Great fun on Dr. Seuss Day!

Here is a finished “Thing 1 handprint”

Making woven fish a few days ago…..

HOW TO MAKE FISH:
Cut out whatever fish shapes you like in multi colors. Cut strips going from top to bottom of fish about 1 1/2 inches apart North to South. Then cut 1 inch strips of colored paper the lenth of your fish. Then weave them in starting with red, then orange, yellow, green, blue, purple (rainbow order). Then glue down the ends of the strips onto the fish so they will stay (both in front and in back).

Then we had a competition to make the most “at” words on the backs of our woven fish. Very fun, speedy writing activity.

We loved all the Dr. Seuss activities this week!

Some kids did their own color order of the strips and didn’t go in rainbow order. It’s all good though!

Here’s our cute Cat in the Hat bulletin board with our woven ONE FISH TWO FISH, RED FISH BLUE FISH.

We also did a fun Crossword Puzzle and Wordsearch “fill in the blank Book Titles” Dr. Seuss Wrote. And we had a book exchange at school. Kids brought their old but in good shape books to trade and some exchanged up to 15 books. They all acted like it was Christmas morning around here!

Favorite Books by Dr. Seuss Graph….I was not surprised that 3 of Dr. Seuss’ books tied for the win.

I can’t believe he wrote 44 books for kids, can you? What was YOUR favorite?

Today we had a Read-A-Thon in our Pajamas in honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday on March 2nd.
Our school is putting on a movie after school with popcorn and Dr. Seuss green cake too.
It’s fun to read in your jammies!

Two thumbs up for green eggs and ham!

In our Pajamas! The whole school wore pajamas! Even the teachers!

Eating Green Eggs and Ham!

It sure was a very fun day today on Dr. Seuss Day!

Having Fun with our 6th Grade Buddies

Here are some samples I found on the web to give us inspiration for a half hour of creative art with our 6th grade buddies last week.

I think I had about 15 of the 6th graders and about 10 of the 2nd graders in my class for this buddy activity the day before Valentines. Each of our classes wrote letters to our buddies for Valentines Day and sent them some candy of some sort. We gave suckers and licorice. They gave us chocolate mini candy bars…Mmmm!

Some kids in my class have 2 buddies….because the 6th grade classes are larger than 2nd grade classes….

But everybody really likes who they got for a buddy…no matter if it is one kid or two kids….

Then We made creations just using scraps of construction paper from our recycling bin and heart cut outs from red, pink, purple and white. Look at what fun it was for just 30 minutes the day before Valentines!

We’ve played kickball with our buddies…we’ve done multiplication games with our buddies….So we thought,

as teachers…maybe we could do a joint art project with our buddies?

Valentine Creations abounded…..

They also invited us to their production of MacBeth, the Shakesperian play….it was fantastic!

Here are some close ups of all the “animals” we created…..

And some close ups of the kids who created them….with some buddy help…..

I am not the greatest photog that ever lived as you can see…

I think they were all proud of their creations….

We’ll have to do this again next year!

Valentines Creative Art Projects….

Hope everybody had a Happy Valentines Day!

Presidents Day Activities

PRESIDENT’S DAY IS COMING UP! We will be studying some of the best of them this week!

Presidents Day Art Project……make some PORTRAITS OF THE PRESIDENTS!

A fun maze I found for Presidents Day HERE at free kids crafts.

Here’s George Washington’s artistic portrait!

And here is Abe Lincoln’s portrait…done by 2nd graders!

We have been learning about Washington and Lincoln in honor of their birthdays and the upcoming President’s Day Holiday on Monday.

It’s a directed drawing……

I did it with the kids on the board while they did it at desks…..

This was a great trick….so kids could see the close up details…these are little 2 x 4 inch copies…
in a library pocket…I passed one out to each student…

They also each got an outline like this to help start out…..

Then I had the mom helpers cut out frames in red and blue for the oval portraits….and the kids
cut around their oval shapes…..

The frames weren’t perfect…but they add a lot don’t you think?

Here’s a fun youtube video that tells a little fact about each American President that we’ve had in the U.S.
It’s funny and it is sung to a familiar tune. The students will love it! Another teachers does a whole unit on Symbols of America that is fantastic. Her link is HERE at Mrs. Jumps Class.

Here’s my friend Marcia’s bulletin board….she added eagles and lots of stars to her kids’ board…..

We added a star and the typed birth and death years…..

The kids had their choice of weekly readers to read….some of them read all week and finished them all!

We also listened to a book on tape of both of their lives….Presidents Lincoln and Washington….

Then we wrote facts on the board in two big lists…..

Some fion and non fiction books on Presidents …..I like to use text “sets” of books to
front load all of the content so my kids can learn first….write after they synthesize the information…

We made portraits of the presidents, read lots of literature books on President’s Day and some Scholastic News and Weekly Readers too. Some of my presidents literature is “just for fun”.

I collect sets of these and save them in magazine boxes for holidays like President’s Day….

I got some little individual flags on stands for each of the kids to take home too. Do you think they liked them?

Gavin, Emma and Flint lovin their flags….

Gavin did a 4 page report… I loved his work! It was wonderful!

Everyone did a great job….I loved them all….

Then we wrote reports on either president of our choice. Here they are! The kids did a great job!

Peter wrote about Lincoln too….most of the kids chose Washington….which was
funny because most of my literature books are on Lincoln….hmmm….

I think they liked the look of Washington better…that must have been it!

President’s Day Art Projects….so cute!

I found this cute paper on clearance last year….Great for a Patriotic Holiday like President’s Day!

Some kids wrote about Lincoln and picked the Log Cabin paper instead….it’s cute too!

Great job on the writing guys….

We practiced our spelling list on these Mr. Lincoln puppets….and wrote the
spelling words in white crayon….they turned out looking a little….under the weather….and I think
the hands are backwards too…… hmmm ….I think sometimes I must not be the greatest instructor!! LOL

But no matter….have a Happy President’s Day Holiday anyway! And may God Bless America!

Valentine Kids Cards and Valentine Card Holders…

This week is Valentines Day. We’ve been busy doing Valentine Cards for parents and relatives and making our Valentine Holders for Tuesday’s Valentine Party.

Here’s our finished Valentine Card Holders for the party Tuesday…

We used big squares of butcher paper in pink, red, lavender and purple for our Valentine Card Holders……..

Mrs. Kenner, one of our mom helpers had spent an hour punching out die cut hearts for us last week….
We also added some Mrs. Moss had cut out (scrolled looking pink ones) and she copied some on pink colored paper…the ones with the faces….

Here is how to start….take a 24 inch square and fold up the left and right bottom corners to the middle. (bottom of heart)

Then use a stapler and staple them a bit overlapping in the middle…I use 2 or 3 staples so they are secure. (Just
staple the top level, not all the way through…so you have a pointy cone shaped pocket….

Then cut around the top of the back side of cone…make it a heart shape on the 2 top sides….like this…..

Then cut some white poster board 2 inch by 15 inch strips for the “handles” and staple them to the top and the inside front….

Like this handle here….then let the kids decorate….I also passed out heart stickers then could use….

I stapled them up and down the hallway outside our door….that way they can go around on Tuesday
and deliver all their Valentines to the different Valentine Holders with the names on the tops.

Then we made some parent cards and wrote on cute stationery some Dear Mom and Dad letters and also a buddy letter to our 6th grade buddies. It took us 2 days to finish both letters but they were really cute.
I forgot to take some pictures but they were really sweet and heartfelt letters….

I had a big Tupperware bin full of hearts and cut outs and things to decorate the cards with.

Kids Valentine Cards were all pretty unique!

The parent letters and cards got a chocolate heart wrapped in silver attached. The buddy letters
and cards just got a sucker attached and we sent them down a package of red licorice for their class.
They had just finished performing the play Macbeth. So it was a wrap party snack.

Cute buddy cards….I forgot to take a picture of all the parent cards but they were even prettier. Who knew
they would take more time and effort on mom and dad’s card? Yeah….I knew they would…..mmmhmmmm…..

Then we made mom and dad a woven heart with some silvery purple or red “kiss lips” attached.
They were not easy for the kids because they had to weave in and out on the pink and red.

This is what they start out looking like…..

And this is how they turned out… really cute! I hope the parents will hang
these cute hearts from a chandelier or light fixture….super cute!

And here are my little valentines. We went to the Thanksgiving Point petting zoo on Saturday.

We fed the animals…rode the tractor hayride…..

And did the pony rides….it was super fun being together with family!

I found an awesome link to a tutorial on those paper roses I’ve been seeing on craft blogs and on T.V. morning shows.These would have been so cute on our parent or buddy cards too!

The link is HERE at Kids Baristanet for the tutorial. We may have to use this idea for a Mother’s Day card in May.

Barista Kids cute paper roses….

She had a really cute way to make an envelope out of a heart too….

We made up poems later in the week. I will post those soon. In the meantime….here are some fun ideas for Valentines activities next week.

Make up a silly “Roses are Red, Violets are Blue” poem.

Decorate a card with thumbprints and

write “Thumb”body loves you!

Write cards where each person shares 1 thing that they love

about every person in their family.

Send home sidewalk chalk. Have kids turn the driveway at home
into a giant Valentine’s Day card by decorating it with chalk.

Write an acrostic poem using the letters L O V E.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY EVERYONE!

The 7 Chinese Brothers & Chinese New Year Fun

HERE is a great link from Learning to Give with multiple lessons plans using The Seven Chinese Brothers. There’s a section where they created banners depicting each of the 7 brothers and their talents. I found a cute video on how to make the Chinese “Paddy” hats they wear in the rice paddies and in the story. I’d like to make hats and list acts of kindness you could do for others in a spiral inside each hat.

How to make a Chinese “Rice Paddy” Hat…..

So for CHINESE NEW YEAR this year we had many wonderful activities. I think it is important to read multicultural stories of the many cultures represented in your classrooms each year. I have Asian students and so I like to teach the other kids about how Chinese New Year is celebrated in the Asian parts of the world.

And we try to make a little celebration of it in my classroom too. Here we are just before our school parade to the other grades singing the Dragon song and showing them our Chinese Dragons we made….

Chinese New Year Dragons…..

Here are some of my students showing off their artistic dragons. Peter’s wearing traditional Korean clothes.

Our finished Chinese dragons…..They did their own lettering with black markers….

This is a VERY cute story we read about Sam who gets Chinese New Year Lucky Money to spend on anything he wants. In the end he buys socks for a homeless man who he sees on the streets of the dragon parade so he can keep warm. Very touching story! Check it out above (Sam and the Lucky Money).

You can barely see the tail here but it is very colorful!

We used lots of colorful crepe paper for the tail streamers and the “fire” coming from the mouth of the Chinese Dragons..

Peter’s mom, Mrs. Kim, came and showed us some Asian Cultural items after our parade! Here’s the Korean Flag.
She is explaining the black markings mean things like fire and water….brother and sister….opposites….

Here is Peter with his mother and all the things they brought for us to see….

Traditional Korean clothing….so pretty!

Asian foods their family likes to eat….Sushi!

Thanks for coming in to teach us Mrs. Kim! We loved it!

More festival costumes of Korea…..

Peter showing us an bow he learned to do…..

Wedding dress clothing represented by these Korean Wedding Dolls….Girls would
wear a dress looking similar to this one in red and green….

More traditional Korean clothing…so beautiful!

Tae Kwon Do is the Korean martial arts…the only one
that is an Official Olympic Sport….

Peter shows off his black belt and martial arts bear…..

Korean money….$10,000 in Korean money means $1,000 in our money…
The top picture shows the famous Korean who did their alphabet we learned….

Here’s Peter showing us a kid’s favorite book Where The Wild Things Are…printed in
the Korean language. It was wonderful to see so many things from Korea! Thanks Peter! And Thanks to
Mrs. Kim who did an excellent job teaching us about some of the customs of Korea.

We started with a MAKING WORDS activity using THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON to try and make as many words as possible. I set the timer for 3 minutes and the kids came up with as many as 32 words in that time. It was a lot of fun to see them get into the competition! Then we looked at a Chinese Calendar (the animal calendar in the round) and figured out what year we were each born.
THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON!
Then we Read some fun literature. The first one we read as a play while I put up the book pictures on the document camera. I just typed up the text of the book and had 4 narrators (each table became a narrator) and the 7 brothers, the Emperor and the Guards. I must say Allie and Emma had the most memorable expression as they acted out their parts!

We did a Readers Theater Play of The Seven Chinese Brothers.….

HERE at Loveland K12 is a list of activities to go along with the story The Seven Chinese Brothers.
Between the two I found word searches, a word jumble (unscramble) and some maps of China. HERE at Vaiden.net is a downloadable story about the 5 Chinese Brothers that would be a good compare and contrast against The Seven Chinese Brothers too. Or HERE at Apples 4 the Teacher are some other fun printables for Chinese New Year.

I made The Seven Chinese Brothers Puppets for them to color and put on thick popsicle sticks to use
while we read the Reader’s Theater version of The Seven Chinese Brothers….It was lots of fun!

Another Book we read to Celebrate Chinese New Year is Sam and the Lucky Money. A fun lesson plan to use with the great book about giving to those less fortunate than you is HERE.

We also read this book The Seven Chinese Sisters and compared and contrasted the two stories and
what the sisters did in theirs versus what the brothers did in their story.
In The Seven Chinese Sisters book there is a dragon that causes trouble.

For Chinese New Year we made DRAGONS to use in our first and second grade parade around the school. We bring small gongs, cymbols, and drums and sing a song while carrying around these awesome dragons we created. HERE at Craft Jr. is a link to a dragon puppet on chopsticks that is very pretty.

I freehand drew a dragon head and we colored it and glued it on a red dragon outline…..

The body and tail are made from 1 foot by 4 foot of yellow butcher paper folded every 8 inches
Then we added 2 foot length streamers to the tail….all colors of the rainbow….so pretty!

We decorated the heads with marker and glued them on the body of the Chinese Dragon Craft

Then we painted chinese lettering on our dragons and made paper decorations for them….

We cut 1/2 inch strips of red, orange and yellow “fire” streamers and stapled them to the mouth…..
Then we added Red, Yellow, Orange, Green, Blue streamers to the tail in about 2 foot lengths stapled….

HERE is the Learning to GIVE link was a list of activities that I really loved too. Here was one I might have to use next week as we get ready for Valentines Day.

“Get out a giant piece of paper and, as a family, make the longest list you can of small ways to say “I like you” to family and friends. Here are some ideas to get you started: bring someone a cookie, rub Mom’s back, offer to weed your grandma’s garden, sweep the floor, bring Dad a drink of water, offer to play your sister’s favorite game, smile at your brother, etc.”

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR….

THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON 2012!

Groundhogs Day Activities

This February 2nd is Groundhog’s Day. For fun we are going to be doing some Groundhog Activities for the day. I thought of writing comic strips or puppet shows. But for a fun activity after math I passed out some Groundhog Gameboards. I told them to design their own Candy Land-Type game for Groundhogs Day using 10 Math Facts in Multiplication, 5 cards, 4 positive and 4 negative situations to land on.

Here’s a cute VIDEO and SONG about Groundhogs Day that my students will LOVE!

They made up their own Groundhogs Day Games!

They needed to use their groundhogs in colors to match their Groundhogs Day Gameboards….

With cards telling Groundhog consequences….super cute!

We started making Groundhog Gameboards using math multiplication facts. We copied some ideas from Candy Land (using bridges and colored groundhog cards to move to different locations on the board) but overall we made up our own fun boards and wrote out fun things as they land on colors and pick a Groundhog color card. Here were some of the CARD consequences they came up with today…. PICK A GROUNDHOG CARD GAME….1. Fell into a snake hole, miss a turn.2. Snowy avalance ahead, hop forward 3 spaces.3. Chased by a bobcat, run ahead 2 spaces.4. Go over the Groundhog Bridge.5. Fell into Shadow Swamp, skip your turn.6. You saw your shadow, stay in your den for 1 turn.

We had poems and songs on the back of our Groundhogs Day games that we read and sang too…..

And they all put 10 multiplication math facts into their games….

A CUTE art project and prediction chart I found at this Mrs. Williamson’s Blog.

We made a prediction on weather the groundhog will see his shadow or not. There were 12 votes YES he will and 9 votes no he will not. We’ll see the results tomorrow in the news!

A cute PATTERN for a Groundhog Art project is HERE at Finally in First.

Groundhog Day ART- This would also make a cute HAT with just a brown strip and the hands just to the left
and right of the head like he’s peeking out of his hole. I LOVE the teeth!

These were the first few that got finished with their Groundhogs Gameboards…..we haven’t played them yet….

They will be excited to play each other’s games on Groundhog Day, February 2nd!

They added math facts on their boards. It was fun seeing the kids color their boards and add matching groundhog colored cards with questions of all kinds on them. These kids are very creative!

We got these blacklines out of the January Teacher Helper Magazine….

HERE at ARTIST HELPER is a website where you can get a printable gameboard and some little groundhogs to copy off if you want to make your own. I got mine out of the monthly teacher helper magazine for January.

Groundhogs for consequence cards or multiplication math facts…. Everybody got 10

Isn’t this the CUTEST cupcake you ever saw? Groundhog Cupcakes would be a sweet treat today!

I showed the kids an old Candyland gameboard…to get some cool ideas….

Another site that has lots of Groundhogs Day Activities is HERE at Artist Helping Teachers.

Then we brainstormed some fun things we could write up on cards or spaces on the Gameboards

We Sang this Groundhog Song to the “I’m a Little Teapot” Tune….

We read a few stories about Groundhogs too. And we read some funny poems about groundhogs and sang songs. We also had a vote on if the groundhog will see its shadow tomorrow or not. I’m hoping we don’t have 6 more weeks of WINTER! Brrrr…… We will watch the youtube of Punxatawny Phil to find out. HAPPY GROUNDHOGS DAY 2012!

I found this Darling video about Groundhogs. Did you know they were Woodchucks? They are so cute!

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.