Plump Turkeys {Class Display}

It took me awhile to come up with a good Thanksgiving class display. I knew I wanted the title to be "Gobble 'til you Wobble!" but I couldn't figure out a good turkey craft to go along with that. I eventually came up with the idea to take a picture of the kids with puffy cheeks, like their mouths were stuffed with food. Some kids chose just to smile, which was fine, too. For the project, I first had the kids marble paint on construction paper, using fall colors for the paint and the paper. When they were dry, I cut out feathers for our turkeys. With the template I had, I was able to get six feathers from each piece of paper. Everyone shared the feathers so that our turkeys could be more colorful. I cut out very simple turkey bodies from brown paper lunch sacks (mainly because I was low on brown construction paper). The kids glued a bunch of feathers to the back of their turkey.

Then they flipped it over and glued on the picture of their face with puffy cheeks. They glued on a wattle beneath their chin. To tie it into the gobble theme, I asked them what their favorite Thanksgiving food was and wrote that on the belly of the turkey. And at the last minute, I decided to draw in some wings, which made them look quite plump.

Cute, right? I know, the wattle looks like a necktie, but it's the best I could do. I chose not to add a beak and snood (the red thing that hangs down from the beak) because I thought it would cover up their faces too much. I hung them in the hallway with my "Gobble 'til you Wobble" title and a little sign that says, "My favorite food to eat on Thanksgiving is..."

What were some of the answers, you might ask? Well, there was a lot of turkey and pumpkin pie, but I also had a cheeseburger and bananas :o) My little plump turkeys are so adorable!

Foil Moon Drawings

Yesterday we read Eric Carle's Papa, Please Get the Moon For Me.

In the story there's a little girl who wants to play with the moon, so her dad uses a really long ladder to get it for her. I wanted the kids to illustrate part of the book, so I cut out circles from aluminum foil to use as moons. We also used black and blue glitter construction paper. (I didn't have enough black paper, which is why we used blue, too.) I love how the glitter on the black paper looks like stars in space.

The kids glued the foil moon to the top of their paper and used oil pastels to draw the ladder.

After that, they could add whatever they wanted, even if it wasn't part of the story. We had some aliens and planets and astronauts.

One boy said he wanted his moon to be a crescent, so I cut it for him.

I love that!

Little Cloud

We are discussing Eric Carle's books again this week and I decided to go with lesser-known titles. (Well, at least to me and my class they are less known.) Today I read Little Cloud.

It's about a small cloud that changes into different things, like a shark, an airplane and a clown. So I made some puffy paint by mixing Elmer's glue and shaving cream. The kids used their fingers to paint a picture on blue paper.

 It was very thick and soft and fun to use as fingerpaint!

I asked the kids what their little cloud changed into and I wrote it on the bottom of their paper.

 "Little cloud changed into a dragon."

"Little cloud changed into a monster." And my favorite:

"Little cloud changed into a knight and dragon bowing to the Queen." Awesome imagination and creativity!

Friendship Bracelets

The kids in my class made bracelets for each other today. They did such a great job! I received some metallic alphabet beads, colorful faceted beads and sparkle elastic cords from CraftProjectIdeas.com.

With fingers crossed, I went through the alphabet beads to find all the letters I needed for every child in my class. I was short a couple of A's, but I used a skinny Sharpie to draw lines on some V's and it worked great. I first had the kids pair up and ask their partner what their favorite colors were. I had quickly made little sheets with all the colors on it and the kids just circled the colors their partner said. Then they set out to make the bracelets. I taped down one end of the elastic cord so they didn't have to worry about the beads falling off.

They were so dedicated to making the perfect bracelet for their friend. I loved watching them! The holes in the beads were big enough that they didn't have any problems putting them on the cords. I just made sure the letters went on in the right order. They all seemed to really like their bracelets and wore them the rest of the day!