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| Tis the season to get crafty! |
How do you spend the last day of school before winter break? Many students leave a few days early, and the ones who stay are so excited they can hardly contain themselves. The fourth grade team decided to hold Pajama Day that Thursday as a way to celebrate the hard work we'd been doing in our realistic fiction writing unit. Thursdays are my favorite days because our only special is Italian (we have Italian every morning, and I have one or two other specials on each other day) and I feel like I am able to teach so much more. I prepared myself for stress and craziness, and yes, there was some intense craziness, but it was actually one of my favorite days of teaching I've ever had! It was a wonderful day of bonding, sweetness, holiday-spirit, and tons of glitter. Here are the three crafts we did throughout the day:
Decoupage Candle Holders
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| She's very focused on her candy-cane inspired jar! |
I grew up with decoupage, but most of my students had never seen it! I found a market-type store in the city that sold little jars and bought one for each student, then went on a tissue paper hunt around school. We used Elmer's Glue instead of Modgepodge as a sealer. Most chose to do either light blue and white for a snowflake effect, red and green, or red and white. I found a huge bag of tea-lights as well to add in the end. Once our jars were dry, we glittered the jars to pieces! They ended up beautiful and so unique! I love how our jars turned out, and hopefully my students will enjoy giving them as gifts!
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| Glitter everywhere! |
They're very easy to make. Mod Podge works best, but glue turns out just fine- it does leave the glass with a 'frosty' look though! To make them, rip your tissue paper into small pieces- about a square inch. Then paint a thin layer of your adhesive onto the glass and lay a piece of the tissue paper onto the glue/Mod Podge. Afterwards, paint another thin layer over the paper, making sure to smooth out any wrinkles. You can overlap the edges of the tissue paper pieces, but be careful because some colors will look muddy when they're mixed. Once they are dry, you can add glitter and a candle!
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She's doing some excellent smudging! The kids wanted to hang up their snowmen to decorate the room until they brought
them home that afternoon, and you can see one in the background :) |
Aerial Perspective Snowmen
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| This one's looking up and has a mustache! |
When I found this idea on Pinterest, I loved it! Before lunch, we drew snowflakes and swirls in white crayon and then used blue watercolors to paint over our drawings. Even though they knew that the crayon would resist the paint, they were still in awe as they saw their snowflakes appear! After, we traced various objects around the classroom to make the pieces of our snowmen. Yes, I could have made stencils, but the base of our globe, the top of our pencil bins, and the bottom and top of our skinny-marker container worked just fine and there was never a single problem with sharing! After tracing the shapes onto white paper, we used blue oil pastels to outline the pencil marks and used our fingers to smudge the blue in. This made it look like a shadow and gave each piece of the snowmen dimension. Eyes were drawn in using sharpies, scarves colored with markers, and carrot noses and stick arms cut from construction paper. After our backgrounds dried, we glued the pieces together. They came out so adorable!
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| This little guy doesn't speak English and usually is very eager to head out for his ELL time each day, but lately (today included!) he's been asking if he can stay in class instead! :) |
Golden Snitch Ornaments
I run Harry Potter Club as an after-school activity, and when my class saw what we'd done last week in Harry Potter Club, they were so jealous that I decided to do it with my class as well! We made golden snitch ornaments with glitter, ribbon, and small gold ornaments and they turned out beautiful. It's really easy- I found 2" ribbon with gold embellishments and wire edges to use for the wings. We cut pieces about 3-4" long and cut them in half, rounding out the edges a little on both pieces. Then we cut small slits all along the ribbon, stopping right before the wire to make them fluttery. Next, we glittered the ornaments (my carpet was absolutely COVERED in glitter by the end of the day!). One of my very responsible students, who is also in Harry Potter Club, helped me man one of the glue guns and we used that to attach the wings. They are so simple to make, but are a truly beautiful decoration! A few students who hadn't fallen in love with Harry Potter (yet!) just made glitter ornaments.
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| When a few finished early, they made them for our librarian, principal, director, and office assistant. They're so sparkly!! |
It was such a magical day! No, we didn't get much academic time in, but we finished our math unit two days earlier than expected, and took some time to share our stories. My intention was reading, math games, and story-sharing during craft down-time, but they were just being so sweet! They wanted to make cards for absolutely everyone; their families, me and the other two fourth-grade teachers, the principal and director of the school, their different Italian teachers, everyone! At one point, a few of my boys barricaded off our classroom library with a white-board they thought I couldn't see over. When they emerged a little while later they had made me a life-size Nimbus 2000! It was the most wonderful, special day and such a fabulous way to end 2014 together. I'm excited to see them all again in January, and know they left school that day happy. Yay!
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| The three things each student brought home at the end of the day :) |
