back to school making stuff

Exploring some different portrait ideas - going for full sized portraits this year - got the idea from Art Lessons For Kids. - some great links down the side column for further ideas too!

But then found this blog: sewingschool which has some fun ideas that may be useful in discovery time.

While I'm sharing some links...love the ideas I have gleaned from HERE for resources and learning experiences within the classroom programme.

Telling stories

We are looking at 'telling our stories' next term and linking this with a performance and finding out about the stories associated with our selves, our families, our school and our country. I'm loving the scope of this concept.

We will be exploring Rakaihautu and his spade and performing this for the New Zealand Principals Conference.

I'm thinking there are connections with drama and theatre sports as well as story telling in songs like 'McKenzie' a story about a supposed sheep rustler and his dog, I think it was the POG band that did a song about him? need to look into that.

I guess I want students to experience stories that take on many forms - orally, dramatic, visually, video, song, dance, books - with words and without...

some energisers

Games & Activities

Tumbolia

First Day Ideas

Class Quilt - individual portraits making up a whole class quilt

Back to school puzzle - make a memory game from the children's photos

Find the gingerbread persons - finding places and meeting people around school

My favourite things - creating a life sized portrait

End of year powerpoint - start collecting the photos now!

Kid pix portrait book

learning names - use a beat!

Rainbow fish

And, because Waitangi day is coming up....links to creating a class 'treaty'.

An Australian site

Treaty of Waitangi

TKI Treaty of Waitangi links

Toi Maori

Looking at some Maori Art or Toi Maori with Year 3's this week.

Idea is to explore some Maori art to later use for signs around the school to remind us of ways to keep Queenstown Primary 'Beautiful'. Part of the 'how to' for the class is 'how to keep our School Beautiful'.

Toi Maori
New Zealand Maori Art
Maori Design\

How To...

hmmm, inquiry topic for middle school in Term 4 is 'how to....' the class will be doing science experiments on other days... I now need to think of something for Wed & Thur afternoons.

but here's some links I want to save for reference...

Pop up Cards (with instructions)
'V' stand - ways to hold the pop ups up!
Pop up card designer - a windows application
enchanted learning - lots of pop ups with good instructions
pop up card instructions - with video!

maybe 'how to make pop up cards & books'?
how to create dimension with paper?
???

Apparently

it's conservation week!

The middle school had talks about Reduce, Reuse and Recycle last week. Cool. I saw some 'desk tidy's' being created - by reusing some tins and boxes... interested to see lots of purchased embellies for these & they were stored in little plastic bags. hmmm. I wonder if something could be created that reuses everything on it except the adhesive perhaps?

Re-use -practical ways to re-use waste at home
Reuse old bags - paper & plastic
Creative ways to use reuse disposable items
Re-using drink bottles
5 ways to re-use newspaper


some other interesting places:
zero waste
zero waste schools
sustainability

Fonts

Some great classroom fonts can be found here!