I
have to admit, I miss fun crafts from my primary days. Especially when we return from a break. I also have to admit, I did the bare minimum
for Christmas. It was really upsetting
to me, honestly. I don’t ever just
ignore holidays. It’s half the fun of
school-creating those crafts and hanging them up in your house. My kids are in middle school and our fridge
still reflects this theme. If they do
anything fun, it still goes up there.
So, I’ve been feeling a little bit lonely when it comes to crafts and
fun. We did do our Charlie Summary, and, that was fun, but I wanted something
to start our year off better, to remind me to remember that students need these
memories.
I started
with Pintrest. There are some fun
things. I really liked this idea of
“Toasting the New Year”, but I just couldn’t come up with the complexity that I
needed. I know that I will eventually
come back to this idea and try the complexity bump, but I couldn’t find it this
year. Then I found this-New Year’s Resolutions and Good Fortunes.
I didn’t
think it was primary, because it had the looks of a more intermediate type of
activity, and it is actually listed for 2nd-5th. When I looked at it closer, it was definitely
a stretch for 4th grade. I
decided though, that it could be tweaked a little. My thought was to play off the balloon
idea. Originally, I was going to cut the
fortunes and place them in balloons for every kid, but the idea of a.) filling
balloons at a store was too pricey, and b.) blowing up those balloons would have
made me winded and dizzy, I decided on a different route. I took balloons and put enough fortunes into
them to meet the needs of the table group.
I had 5 balloons, 4 with 4 fortunes and 1 with 3. Perfect!
Here’s how
it worked. Besides the fortune balloons,
I copied the balloons on 6 different colors.
I did not copy the white writing page.
I wanted to save the paper and, as it came out, they looked fine with
just the writing on them. Once I had
everything copied and blown up, I passed out the balloons to each group. I made them stop and come up with a plan of
how they were going to pop the balloon without sitting on it. I allowed them to talk about it. This simple
act of stopping and thinking saved a lot of hardship. It made them cooperatively decide who was
doing what and come up with a safe plan (no scissors!) Amazingly, pens and pencils did a great job
of bursting those balloons!
Once the
balloons were broken, the kids each picked a fortune.
This is when the magic happened! It wasn’t long before someone said, “I don’t
understand what this means.” And out of my mouth came, “These are metaphors for
life. You make them what you want them
to be. It is comparing two things, you
have to fill in the connection!” Holy
cow! We finished figurative language
before break. I could make this
connection for them. They began to roll
with it! They were able to go with it
and complete some pretty amazing things.
This got me thinking-Why, oh why, haven’t I hit the idea that some of
these primary “fun” stuff have much deeper meaning. The complexity is there; we just have to see
it! I’ve got to start taking my own
advice (Shades of Meaning) and start calling these things what they are! It’s given me a different perspective on how
to put the complexity back into things and make them count for more! We finished up the balloons by cutting them
out and adding some ribbon I have been hoarding in my closet for making
jellyfish for an ocean unit I never got to!
So, not only did I use complexity, I used hoarded supplies!
Now, you
will notice, I didn’t include the resolution in my work with the balloons. Last year I stumbled upon the 2013 (updated
for 2014) New Year, New Me activity.
I
loved it so much, we are doing it again this year! Tomorrow we will work on filling out the
written parts of the mobile. Today, we
colored! It was actually nice. They were able to communicate to one another
their holiday fun stuff. I heard about
presents, trips, family events, and an impromptu lesson on who Ben Franklin
was! If there’s one other thing I’ve
learned about doing these projects now, it is that sometimes you have to stop
and take time to be together as a
class. That’s what has been missing,
that’s what racing to get curriculum covered and worrying about every
assessment under the sun has done. It
has robbed us of the opportunity to just breathe and be. And it’s robbed us of the chance to see fun
activities as the complex being that they can be!
Now, for a
freebie! Like I said, we were working on
figurative language. We made this great
foldable that I saw on Pintrest one time. (Here is the link: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/111604896985892846/_
)
It is an all about me project. But I like that it had figurative language in
it, and thought I could adapt the layout to fit figurative language only. So, as a freebie, I will include all of the
insides for the foldbable.
Figurative language: Page 1
Feel free to think about how you might change this and make
it more complex for your class! Then let
us know how you might do that in the comment section below!
2 comments:
Great ideas! Thanks for sharing and for linking up on Spark Creativity.
Thanks Betsy! I enjoyed your link up!
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