Summer Send Off!

This year I created summer gift bags for my students again. Every gift they receive from me involves books! Duh, what else do teachers give?! Thanks to Scholastic Book Clubs, I can purchase books for $0.95 each and get more for free using my bonus points! I got the kids three books, one for each summer month. These included, Old Yeller, The Lemonade War, and I Survived: The Sinking of the Titanic.

I also included summer fun items in matching colors; pencils, erasers, bubbles, and sunglasses! They looked sort of impressive and the color coordinator in me was giddy over how they matched! The pencils came in packs of 12 from Dollar Tree and the erasers came in 6 packs from the same place.  I picked up the bubbles from there too, in packs of 3.  The sunglasses came from Oriental Trading in bundles of 10. 

I used red paper gift bags that I got from Dollar Tree and then used construction paper in blue and white to add decoration.  Using the Ellison paper punch at school and the star shaped punch, I made patriotic themed bags! 

The gifts were a hit! And my students were adorable in their new shades! They were particularly awesome as we all exited to the busses! I am so proud of these kids!

Here's to a happy, sun and fun filled summer!

How I Will Remember You!

Thursday, June 14, 2012 may be the most difficult day in my short teaching career yet.  I say goodbye to my second year students as they embark on their journey to middle school! I am fully prepared with tissues and water-proof mascara because I am quite certain I will be in tears. Just writing this is making my eyes damp! Oh gosh!

This winter I had a genius (well, I think it's genius) idea of a great personalized gift to give my departing 5th graders.  The concept seemed simple at first, but as I delved into the project I realized that it may be a bit more challenging than I anticipated! I started by creating a ring of notecards, one labeled for each 5th grader, and I began creating lists of words that describe or remind me of them. Some have ridiculous seeming words because I wrote down something they did or said at one point in the past two years.  It is easy to talk about kids in full sentences, but narrowing them down to single words was WAY more difficult than I thought it would be. After I compiled my words, I entered them into Wordle, a word cloud creator.  A word cloud is literally a random grouping of words that you choose to enter. I then adjusted colors and fonts until I had each one personalized to the student it was about.  I then printed them on 4x6 photo paper so they looked really nice.

Each cloud then got its own picture frame, purchased at IKEA in packs of two for $2.99.  They are simple, inexpensive frames, but they worked perfectly for the project! 

I then used Scrabble tiles to personalize the frames with the students names (Thanks to my aunt Kathy, Craig, and my parents for the donation of tiles).  I have decided that Scrabble games should come with more Ls and Es! I used super glue to attach the tiles in a tilted manner, because after consulting an expert (my dad) we decided that straight tiles just looked wrong. Each frame has a different layout, some tiles run across the top, bottom, and shorter names went down the sides.  The goal was to make it so no two were the same, just like my kids!

In the end they turned out way better than I even anticipated and I am so excited for the kids to open these up and reflect on our two years together! 

Wrapping was simple, brown craft paper and some natural colored raffia bows. After the extensive project, I figured that wrapping should be the easy part!

Here's to a memorable two years and to bright futures for all fifteen of these kids. I wish them all of the best things in life. 

Love, 

Ms. Grothe

  

The Willow Pattern Story!

I saw this art project on Pinterest months ago and have been wanting to have my students participate! I ordered "The Willow Pattern Story" by Allan Drummond from Amazon so I could have a text based introduction for the project.  I try to relate all of my projects to either something we are studying or to a book that I can share with the kids to give them a bit of background.  The project was fairly inexpensive, I bought about 8 packs of variety size paintbrushes from our local dollar store, Deals Only. The plates were about $3.00 for a pack of 100! You need paper plates, not waxed covered, if you want the paint to stay! The paint came from our school supply closet, blue and white tempera.  Students were given their Willow plate and a second plate for mixing the paint for varying shades of blue. Each group also had a couple cups of rinse water and sets of the paint.  In hind sight, I should have used wax covered or plastic bowls for the paint rather than more plates, because they would be more liquid proof and would be easier to cover with saran wrap. Oh well, to remember for the future! When students completed their pieces I hung them on the bulletin board for all to see!

While they painted, I displayed a tea saucer that I borrowed from my mom featuring the Blue Willow pattern.  This helped give students a visual reference for what they heard about in the story. 

The students worked hard to imitate the original pattern by incorporating the love birds at the top of the pieces, a river, pagodas, a zigzag fence, the bridge with three people crossing, and various trees. 

I had a couple unfinished pieces at the time of the following picture, hence the awkward gap!