I love to share ideas (obviously) just as much love to "steal" ideas. And now, Pinterest has created a virtual bulletin board that makes it a walk in the park. I have found some really great ideas in which I have used this year. Some winners, some losers.
Here are my winners:
Reflection Name Art
Original Pin from teachkidsart.blogspot.com
And here are my kiddos:
This was so much fun and went well with math standards on geometry. I did this lesson slightly different than the directions given, here's how I did it.
1. First I gave the kids a 12" x 12" white construction paper square.
2. We folded together to get our 8 triangles.
3. I then modeled the bubble/block letters in the first triangle (in pencil). Kids had 5 minutes to work on their own.
4. After they were done with the first letters, we traced over ours names very dark. Then we folded the paper once and rubbed the backside. This gave the mirror image pretty well.
5. We then just traced over the new name dark and repeated the steps. Then color!
I will do this again, and again, and again.
Angry Verbs
Original post from supersweetsecondgrade.blogspot.com
And my kids:
Oh, no, I forgot to take a pic! :( However, this was so much fun. The kids were pumped up for this assignment, and the icing on the cake? I let the student(s) who had the best story with the most incredible verbs play Angry Birds on my iPad during computer lab. What an incentive!
Next time I will do this at the beginning of the year to create stronger writing from day one.
And now the losers: Wah wah.
Yarn Balls
My kids:
So, some turned out very well, and others....well, we dropped the ball. I enjoyed this project, but here are the reasons why I think this didn't turn out well. Number one, this was using waaaaaay too much glue for my pocket books and I started getting stingy. Less glue = limpy yarn. Next, some of the yarn was very thin and was not stable enough. Finally, I didn't anticipate the balloons deflating from the drying of glue (it makes sense now), which collapsed some of the yarn and deformed the shape. This also happen when some kids popped their balloons, but had too much glue on the actual balloon, which also collapse the project.
End result: very frustrating. Not doing it again.
Bubblegum Art/Writing: theteacherwife.blogspot.com
My kids:
Perhaps, I should just stay away from balloons. Hrmphf. I thought that this was going to be an awesome lesson after state testing where the kids could have some fun. The kids loved the gum, and did very well following the rules that I gave for them. Instead of doing a step-by-step writing on how to blow a bubble, I let the kids have a free write on gum (a memory, a narrative, a poem, point of view from the gum, etc.).
To tell you the truth, the end product turned out alright, but the process with the balloons was a fiasco. Probably my fault, but many kids popped their balloons, lost them in the few minutes they had them, or they deflated after a day. :( I bought 125 balloons ($20ish) and it just didn't see worth it. So sadly, this won't be an assignment I do again.
