Gratitude Projects 2016

This is the time of year the kiddos are starting to mentally check out. We have so many events in these last few months-field trips, awards celebrations, Field Day, etc. I want to do some kind of project each week to try and channel that focus. One of the projects I do every year is a Gratitude Project.

I start talking about gratitude from Day One with my kiddos. Once a week we write in a Gratitude Journal-sometimes they write about whatever they'd like, sometimes I give them a prompt like "write about what you are grateful for that you can't see". When they complain about things like why didn't a parent bring juice if they bring cupcakes for a birthday-I see that as a teaching moment-be grateful you have cupcakes. If they complain about having to do an assignment, I remind them of students in other countries who would love to be allowed to go to school.

So this time of year I ask them to put their ideas down on a poster. Name six things you are grateful for. I ask them to thing deeply on the subject and see what they can come up with.

earth, teacher, flowers, furniture, God, water and butterflies.

family, dog, Dad, friends, mom and everyone

Electricity, house, mom, earth, family and sun

mom, school, my teacher (I've been working out-look at those arms! :), food, friends and birds

birds

parents, water, electricity, pencils paper and animals

mom, animals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish

Scientists, astronauts, brother, mom, house, dog

superheroes, lizards, friends, angels, princesses, you

princesses

toys, ocean, animals, trees, magnets and electricity

trees, the world, houses, vegetables, puppies

dogs, trees, rain, gravity, clothes and friends

Love this illustration for gravity.

cousins, dog, friends, parents, brother, family

pinecones,pools, horses, dentist, mom, ocean

pinecones :)

Mother's Day Inspiration

I wanted my kids to make something meaningful for their moms on Mother's Day but you know I don't usually do the fluffy, cutesy stuff. I was walking around Michael's and I got inspired. I literally bought the materials that evening, started painting the next day and had their projects done and dry in time to go home on Friday.

We started with a blank canvas and painted it all black (I used tempera paint). Then I took pics of the kids blowing imaginary stars off their hands, we mod podged the pictures with the stars (they could place them however they wanted to). I think the final product is worthy of any mantelpiece and they still got to use their creativity skills. They were similar, but they were also all very different-as I feel art should be.

Here are some examples of our final product.

An Argument for Wordless Books

In my experience wordless books are misunderstood. Every year we have at least one on our list for the student book club I facilitate for, and inevitably a parent will send it back saying-"this was too easy for them, there were no words" or a student will say "my mom told me to get a harder book-there were no words". I LOVE wordless books! I actually feel a bit of a thrill when I'm at the library, choose a book that looks interesting, start paging through it and discover it's a wordless book. We talk a lot about making inferences and I think this is an amazing way to teach them systematically how to think through that skill.  I think it actually takes more thinking power to follow a story that is not being told to you in words and I am in awe of authors who can illustrate their stories well enough to know what is going on in each page. 

I have discovered some favorites over the years that may be new to you:

This is a really beautiful story! The illustrator deftly captured the expressions of a little girl who is both curious and a little frightened of the waves. Love this book! 

One of my goals for my students is to help them be more empathetic-I think this book is a great example of that. A girl works chores to earn enough money to buy a bicycle-but things don't work out quite like she had hoped.

When I first read this book I thought...oookkaayyy! The premise is a little strange, but sweet. A farmer sees a carnival passes by and loses the little clown. He takes care of him until they can return him to the circus.

Being a dog lover I completely feel for Daisy in this story. My grandmother used to have a boxer just like her. He literally slept with his tennis ball. He would bring it to you to throw it 100 times and go get it and drop it at your feet again. He was buried with tennis balls. Daisy has a similar fixation on her ball but ends up having a little problem that makes her sad. Another sweet, sweet story.

This book deals with perspective. You have a shot of the bee and a peek at its location and the next page surprises you with where he actually is. The kids loved the mystery factor in this book.

Another one I had to read a few times before I really understood the point of the story. A child discovers a mysterious camera on the beach and the pictures reveal a mystery. A challenging story.

My next two posts will be about the activities we did with the wordless books. I hope you will consider using them with your kiddos. You will not regret it!

Staff Appreciation

My Student Council group makes something for our staff to hang on their doors every year. Since we have been doing it for probably 10 years already it is hard to come up with creative ideas of what to do. This year's is not super-creative but hopefully it's the thought that counts! :)

We just took picture frames from Lakeshore with the adhesive backing and stuck it to craft foam with a chenille wand as the hanger. (Funny story-someone stole my Amazon package from my doorstep-I'm sure they were very disappointed it was only a box of craft foam. That's what you get for stealing from a teacher! :). Then they decorated it with Sharpies and shape cutouts. They also wrote some very meaningful notes on the back. I love listening them as they discuss their teachers-his favorite color is red, let's make his red. Or she is fancy, hers needs to be fancy. They know their teachers so well!

Just a little token of our appreciation but hopefully it will make them smile tomorrow when they come in to find the doorhangers on their doors!

Our Mother's Day Tea

I know, early to be thinking about Mother's Day. We have standardized testing in our upper grades in May and when we test, parents are not allowed in the building-so I wanted to make sure I set it on a safe date. The kiddos dressed up in their Sunday best. When their mom entered they took her by the hand and led her to her seat, they served their moms what they wanted to for breakfast (some kiddos first foray with tongs! :). We made some activities for them to peruse while they were waiting. And then we played our digital stories which I had previous blghttp://www.notjustchildsplay.blogspot.com/2016/04/digital-stories.html.

Two of my favorite pages from stories this year:

Very high praise indeed! :)

He didn't know what clip art to look for-I suggested since he was writing about love that he look for a heart. He is a scientist at heart so this choice was soooo him! :)

It was such a wonderful morning! I had 100% of moms in attendance. There were some teary eyes as they read and heard their children call them angels and heroes. It was a really nice activity.

Now the kids did all the decorating. 

In a few weeks we will honor our Dads in the same fashion-because you know, equality and all! :)

My Poets

To sum up our Poetry Unit, I ask my students to write their own poems. I tell them to think about something they are passionate about or a message they want to convey. Some of them wrote some deep poems-they used similes and onomatopoeia. Our plan was to read our poems to an audience; we had a field trip planned to a local college. We were going to read the poems to education students there and show the kids what a college looked like up close. Unfortunately, Mother Nature thwarted our plans a bit when she sent torrential rains our way. School was actually cancelled because of the flooding, so we missed that opportunity-best laid plans!

But here are their poems (I typed them because they had trouble reading their own handwriting and phonetic spelling):