This project started completely by accident, but sometimes the happiest of accidents turn out to be blessings in disguise. This is our path to making some wooden ornaments, but you can take a few shortcuts with our lesson below. Continue Reading
Christmas
Recycled Materials: Christmas Wreaths
Here is a great activity your students can do that is both environmentally friendly and makes a wonderful Christmas gift.
Your students can help create one wreath as a group or can create their own wreath depending on how much material you have to recycle.
Materials: 1 metal clothes hanger per wreath, old green clothes such as shirts, socks, tablecloths, towels, sheets, and pants (they can be a variety of shades of green as well as different types of materials, but in our experience knitted items do not work well), scissors that cut cloth, green yarn scraps, decorations such as bows, bells and old ornaments
Here’s how to make it: Continue Reading
Here’s a little task you can give to your students to make an environmentally friendly Christmas tree ornament. For this task we have chosen to make a snowman.
You will need: newspaper, magazine or flyers, white glue (glue sticks work, but not as well), yarn/string, ornamental details like
googly eyes, bells, felt, markers. You may need hot glue to attach large pieces together.
Here’s how to make your own recycled paper snowmen. Continue Reading
Logic Puzzlers
Do you like to do logic puzzles? Some people like word searches and others like Sudoku, but logic puzzles is where it’s at. They require critical thinking, problem solving and deductive reasoning. And they are fun! Students learn to read for information in a way that is highly engaging. Continue Reading
Phew! You made it! Christmas is over, but remember how crazy and busy it was? That’s why we always get prepared one year in advance. Are we crazy? No, just thrifty.
Think about all the Christmas items you needed this year. How much did it all cost? More than you planned, right? Here are five things we buy right after Christmas for the next school year to save some money. Continue Reading
Are you looking for a quick and not-too-messy project for any age? Well, look no further than fingerprint art.
Using a little paint, construction paper and markers, your students can transform their fingerprints into different art projects with lots of engagement and very little time or clean up. Continue Reading
For seven years we have been part of a proud tradition in our community. We make cards and deliver them to the houses and business all around our school community. We mail them to agencies and businesses involved with our school community.
Students collect all kinds of goodies like stickers, glitter, paper and old Christmas cards to upcycle them into new cards. Each student makes 2-3 cards so we have about 1500 cards to deliver during the month of December. Continue Reading
Christmas Word & Logic Activities
You know that week in December when you’re constantly called down to the auditorium for concert rehearsals, some of your students are away sick, some have left for vacation early and you have to keep a classroom full of excited kids busy? Christmas is fun and all, but it’s so hard to keep kids interested in learning and it’s a challenging time to introduce new concepts with all those interruptions. What’s a teacher to do? Continue Reading
Here’s a great reason to eat potato chips. Have your students collect Pringles cans and upcycle them into a great holiday activity. This activity will work with other types of cans that made of cardboard with a metal base and plastic lid.
We made our cans into snowmen, penguins, Santas, elves and reindeer. Continue Reading
Looking for a new twist on a Christmas tree art project. We’ve searched high and low to find and test out some of our favourites and here they are just for you!
When composing pieces like these we often encourage students to use an odd number of objects. We also ask them to have part of their drawing go off the page. Students have a page to use to practice the steps or skills before trying out their “good copy.” Give students direct instruction on how to use pastels, paint brushes or how to complete specific strokes. Don’t forget to teach students how to look after the different materials and resources.
Let’s get started. Continue Reading