The Box

I did an experiment in my classroom the past two weeks.  I rescued a box from the garbage pile,

 

and covered it with white butcher paper.  I set out some markers and did not say a word about it.  On the first day, no one said anything about the box.  No one even asked me about it.  BUT, on the second day . . . .

it became an easel!  It also became a wonderful place to make . . . .

PATTERNS!!!!!

The power of junk!  I'm a going to try and find something "different" each week for my students to draw on.  Do you have any ideas for me???  If you do, please post them in the comment sections!
THANKS!

Under the Sea

Our "Under the Sea" week turned out to more fun than even I expected!  Usually by the time we get this deep into the school year, the students tend to get bored more easily.  NOT WITH THIS UNIT!  WOW, we had so much fun! 

This is my classroom!

I don't even remember where I got this large poster.

Someone threw it away and I retrieved it from the trash!

One of the most fun things we did this week was walk down our  hallways.  REALLY?!?!?!  Yes, we had so much fun swimming like a fish, crawling sideways like a crab and even floating like a jellyfish down the hall.  A real plus here is that fish are very quiet, so it was a wonderful way to keep us quiet as walked.  Okay, now let me show you some of the fun (and messy) things we did this week.

For the past couple of years, we have made a giant ocean scene.  It takes a couple of days but it is really fun.  First we have to paint the water.  Now that just didn't seem fun enough for us, SO we decided to do it the Mrs. Karen way!  First we squeezed on paint different colors of paint (green, blue, turquoise, and white).  Next, we used different types of rollers, brushes and scrappers to spread around the paint.

 

While that was drying (and it did take a full 24 hours to dry), we made different sea creatures out of our hand prints and cut out seaweed.  

Everyone was so very proud of their work!

One of our favorite books this week was Please Don't Eat the Teacher by Nick Ward.

 

This quickly became a class favorite and I was asked to read it everyday!  After reading it, there was no way my students were going to let me get through the week with a shark art project.  I think I nailed it!

 

Of course, there were those who wanted to make a hammerhead shark!



 

Here is a close-up of his/her mouth.  The children painted the inside of a small paper plate.  Then they cut (I drew the lines) little triangles all the way around the plate.  When you fold it in half it makes a perfect mouth!



 

I saw this amazing file folder game on PINTEREST but unfortunately the link did not work.

I loved the idea and I wanted everyone in my class to be able to do it.  Guess what?  We did!  Here is our Counting Octopus.

The octopus is a girl.  See her hair bow!

 



A close-up of our legs.

I will admit this activity is not for everyone.  There was a lot of circle punching involved in this, but I think it was worth it.  The children loved counting the circles and gluing them onto the legs.

Friday was our "Q" day.  We tried (really, we did) to be quiet, but as you can imagine it was more fun to be quick!  We also started working on our big Friendship Quilt.  This year we used real material.  Everyone picked out their favorite color construction paper and glued on different shaped pieces of material.

This is where I get to say "OPPS!"  I forgot to take pictures of the finished pieces, but I will and I will post them in a day or two.  We will join all the pieces together to form our giant "Friendship Quilt" and it will be on display for our end-of-the-year Art Show, which will be this Thursday.

 

Thanks for stopping by and visiting with us.  I hope you come back and visit with us soon.

USA!!

I've said it before and I'll say it again . . . "I LOVE THE USA!"  What an amazing week we had talking about our wonderful country and some of the people who made it great! 

We started out with one of my all time favorite ideas.  Each child was assigned a specific person who helped shaped our country.  I went to the library and found historical books about each person.  My class loves when I show them "grown-up" books.  I know, most of the information in these books was too advanced for my class, but we loved the pictures and there were a lot of exciting details that our normal books lacked.  I also gave them little details all week about their specific person and by the end of the week everyone was referring to each other by their character's name!  My favorite moment came when I overheard Abraham Lincoln say, "Hey George (Washington), do you want to play with me on the playground?".  SUCCESS!

We started our week by talking about George Washington.  Talking about President Washington was fun and exciting for my class, especially when they saw his hair and clothes.  We spent the day chopping down the cherry tree and working on this amazing craft.

This was so simple but so much fun!  At the same time we were talking about George Washington we started discussing Betsy Ross.  Well, sweet Kloe (a.k.a. Betsy Ross) said she wanted to make Betsy Ross instead of George Washington.  Uhhhh . . . . okay, here is Kloe's version of Betsy Ross!

The bonnet was ALL Kloe's idea!  She saw it in one of our books and nothing would do until we figured out how to put a bonnet on Betsy,  I LOVE IT!!

Wednesday was spent talking about our flag.  We talked about the 13 stripes and counted ALL the stars (over and over and over again!).  We looked at pictures of older flags and flags from other countries.  We also made our very own American flags!

The only part of the flag that had any assistant from me was the blue square.  I drew it and the children did the rest. 

 The children used their fingers to make the stars.

We had a wrench thrown into our plans on Thursday but since it was such an opportunity, we did not mind.  One of our local TV meteorologist came to visit us.  James Spann came to talk to us about the weather. 

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Since we were talking about our flag, we made Mr. Spann a very special flag!

 

I think he really like it!  We even made it onto the local news on Friday night!

 

After Mr. Spann left we spent the remainder of our day talking about Abraham Lincoln.  Since everyone was amazed to learn that he lived in a log cabin, we made one for very own.

 

 

Look closely and you can see the numbers written down the side.  I took ten strips of paper and wrote 1 through 10 on them.  The children had to put them in order to form the log cabin.  Of course the rest of the art project was a good way to review our shapes.  Good 'old Abe had a circle for his head and 2 rectangles made his hat.  And the log cabin had a rectangle door, a square window and a triangle roof.  We used the child's fingers to make his beard.

Finally our Fabulous Fun Friday arrived!  Our letter of the week was "U" so we declared Friday "Unusual Day"! 

Our day begin by our class coming in to see all our new unusual classroom.  We removed the "regular" blocks and replaced them with . . .

well, I'm not real sure what these are but I found them in our supply closet.  I think they are some type of cardboard supports.  We used them along with some cardboard boxes my friend Laura gave us for some really cool buildings.

We actually called them "logs" and used them for our log cabins. 

I also added a new fine motor skill game.  It was so simple, I glued little cups to a large rectangle box and added a golf ball.  It was a big hit! 

We had so much fun trying to move the ball through out simple maze.

I will admit the most fun activity we did this past week was very unusual!  We drew pictures under the table!

We used markers and colored pencils to make some amazing art work (which of course I didn't get any pictures).  But, it was so much fun!

As our week came to an end we headed to the kitchen to make some (very) ugly cookies! 

We added several different colors of food coloring to our vanilla icing to make the "ugliest" color.  We spread it on some graham crackers and YUM, they were so good!

Because of President's Day on Monday, our week was a little short, but we managed to squeeze in a lot of fun.  I hope you find some of these ideas helpful for your classroom and hope you stop back by again!