Pencils and Paisley: April 2014

For the past TWO weeks I've been on Spring Break! I had every intention of posting these earlier, but I was in vacation mode. Here are a few activities that we did before we left.

Preposition Airplanes:

I found this activity on Pinterest via Smart Chick. After learning about prepositions, the students were able to write sentences of their own in a really fun way! We first made paper airplanes using plain computer paper. I made them take an oath vowing that they would not make paper airplanes in class unless I give them permission! Then, the students flew their airplanes anywhere in the class. On their whiteboards, they had to write down where the plane landed using a preposition. They did this five times. After, I had them write where the plane landed in complete sentences. To save paper, I just had them write the sentences on their airplanes. It was fun!

Junk Art:

For Earth Day coming up, my city hosted a junk art contest for kids. I had the students bring in their "junk"-- anything that can be recycled-- and they were able to create anything they wanted out of the material. I will admit that I was really freaking out with the amount of "junk" that was brought in. While they were creating, I was walking around cleaning! Ahhh! In the end, the projects turned out really cute and the kids were very creative. Aaaaand, they did a great job of cleaning up the classroom too. This was a fun way to connect recycling and Earth Day to the arts.

Shamrock Art:

For St. Patrick's Day, we did a fun shamrock art activity. I pre-printed the outline of a shamrock on paper. Then, I had the students use a ruler and pencil to draw as many intersecting lines as they wanted through their shamrock. This was also an opportunity to talk about angles and lines. In the space created by the lines, the students were able to draw any design that they wanted, or some just drew different colors. I just told them that they couldn't use one color and to try not having the same colors touching. After they finished, they went over the pencil marks with a black marker. I think they turned out really cool!