Duly reprimanded and actually really honored to Katy's shout-out in her sidebar list, I am including some more teaching ideas on my blog.Christmas decorations and fast finishers--the perfect blend. Above is a picture of a tree you can make with kid's handprints. I am kicking myself for not taking a picture of the one my classroom made, as it really outdoes this picture, but you get the general idea.
My suggestions, and what made our tree fantastic, was this:
1. Outline the desired tree shape with masking tape (we made ours on our door, but any wall will do)
2. Show kids how to cut out hands. Some of them will get brilliant and realize that you can cut out about ten hands at a time. Depending on how long you make this activity, you might want to let them do that. For me, I said that five at a time was the limit. I had the paper pre-cut into hand-sized rectangles.
3. Tape the hands so that the fingers are at the bottom (unlike this picture, where the hands go up and out). Make fringed rows of handprints to create the illusion of a fir tree. The picture I have here (from online) has maybe 50-60 hands. In my classroom, we used well over four hundred. It looked as real as a paper tree could look.
4. Your students make the ornaments on the tree. This was a fun activity they could work on whenever they had finished their work early. We also scheduled in some time for completing the tree before Christmas.
Hi Celeste! (from cousin Tona) Doesn't this violate church-state somehow? In our area, holiday season decoration can't have religious significance. Not an issue where you are, apparently?
ReplyDeleteIn references to Tona's comment, it is actually not so widely separated in Utah. I teach in a county that is still pretty small-town, though it does have an increasing diversity amongst its student population.
ReplyDeleteIt was my students who actually asked me if we were going to have a Christmas Tree in the classroom. On our school calendar, it is also still called "Thanksgiving Break," and "Christmas Break."
Another fun idea, less religiously tied, is when you put up a bulletin board with nothing on it but black paper and some white "hills." Students can make ski lifts, snow boarders, snowmen and hot cocoa shops--whatever their imagination prompts (and you, as a teacher, approve). I got some dynamic variants on one student's skier caught in a snowball... I seem to remember watching that happen to Disney's Goofy as a child...
Great ideas. I'm going to work on that snow theme.
ReplyDeleteMom