Rm. 202 Literary Lanterns Project

A few weeks ago I started seeing tweets about Literary Lanterns and they were so interesting to me. Basically think of a pumpkin painted like your favorite book character, and that’s what they are. We toyed with the idea of doing this on a school level, but it didn’t happen, so Rm. 202 decided to do it for ourselves!

First I showed my friends some examples of some pumpkins other kids had created, since I figured most of them didn’t really didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. 🙂

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Then we brainstormed a list of characters kiddos would like to create, with two minor rules: NO ONE could do Piggie or Elephant and NO ONE could do the Pigeon, because well, EVERYONE would want to do those characters and that would be a very boring pumpkin display. Once everyone was clear on those guidelines (which really meant that EVERY OTHER BOOK CHARACTER in the world was fair game), kiddos got busy creating a list of ideas.

I pulled up our book pictures on our ActivBoard, and many also studied our door display (see? Another reason why this project has been SO GREAT!).

Originally I was going to take our ideas and make a list and then have everyone pick the one they wanted, but instead had them circle the one they most wanted to create on the list they first brainstormed. Then I just had to cross-reference everyone’s choice (which was much easier and much less work!) and surprisingly it all worked out really nicely. Some kiddos were paired up (if they chose the same book) and some worked alone.

These choices were made on a Friday, so that kiddos could then work at home over the weekend to secure their pumpkin and any other supplies they might need. To my surprise and delight, this showed up on Monday:

Once we had our pumpkins, our plans and some time, we got busy!!

Oh my goodness they looked great!

Then we had a super idea about how we’d share them with our Robinson friends. I asked Mrs. Meihaus if she would let us make a display of them in the library so we could show up our hard work and creativity, and she so kindly said YES! Most teachers at Robinson know about our #classroombookaday challenge and how this went along with our crazy reading love, so were interested in what we were doing anyway.

Then we had another great idea: we would use this project as the basis of our learning on elections and voting. Our display was set up, we created a sign to hang above our pumpkins and then everyone of them was numbered. I created a Google form for Robinson friends, family and teachers (anyone who views the display, really) to cast their votes and now we’re off! We are so proud and very excited to see what happens with this project now that it’s in place in the library. 🙂

And without further ado, here are our final products:

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We’d love to include you in our voting, too! If you’d like to vote for YOUR favorite pumpkin, scan the QR code or click on the link below and cast your vote! We’d LOVE to see how far this project can spread outside of our walls in Missouri, so please also share where you live! THANK YOU in advance!!

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goo.gl/PXrKZb

Global Read Aloud Week 3: The Reader

This week was the half-way point of the Global Read Aloud. We have so enjoyed the texts we’ve read so far, and this week’s book was no different. Lauren Castillo has become a new friend to all of Rm. 202 kiddos and we enjoyed interacting with another of her great books: The Reader.

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As we read this beautiful story of a boy, his dog, a cold, snowy day and a good book, we discussed many parts and made many predictions. We talked about who we thought “the reader” was, where we thought they were going, and we even connected a part of the story with the punctuation investigation we started the other day (which OF COURSE I’ll tell you more about later on!).

We got to this page of the book, when the boy heads toward home, and thought that maybe something was missing (sorry, Lauren Castillo!).

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So…we added it. 🙂 And the best part was that Rm. 202 kiddos knew that it needed exclamation points to make it sound exciting, and they also suggested that it be written in all capital letters because that also tells the reader how it should sound. 🙂

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Great, right? And of course, no disrespect to the way it was actually written. Reading lots Elephant and Piggie books makes us see speech bubbles EVERYWHERE!!

After we read and talked, we decided to get artistic and kiddos were invited to paint in response to the story. They were asked to answer one of these two questions: Where is YOUR favorite place to read? or What is YOUR favorite thing to do in the winter? Once their paintings were complete, they chose a paper to matte their piece, and wrote a card to explain their creation. We brainstormed words we might want to use and created a chart to use a resource in our writing. I CANNOT wait to see what these look like altogether on the bulletin board at school, but I had to go ahead and share them individually with you here from home. They sure are pretty!!

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And I know I have said this every week of the GRA so far, but maybe this is the week that we finally join the slow chat about the books we’re reading. Maybe. LOL 🙂

Dot Day UPDATE: We Made Our Mark!

I hope that you have already enjoyed the story of our Dot Day 2016 celebration, but if not, you might want to check that out first, and then you will have an even better idea of how we got here. This is an update–one thing I forgot to share (what??) and our amazing paintings that weren’t ready to share yet. Believe me, these MARKS are amazing!

First our favorite parts of Dot Day (not surprisingly, it was the DOTS for most kiddos!)

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Now the BEST part. 🙂 We made dots and watched them splatter…and we wrote about them, too!

Happy in Our Skin!

For the last few years, I’ve started the year with creating beautiful things to hang in our room. It’s so great to watch as our bare walls fill up with amazing creativity that spills out of our first grade minds!

This project is both fun and meaningful as it’s based on helping kiddos see that while we are all different that’s an amazing thing, and that within those differences we can celebrate ways we are also the same.

As with many things, we started our conversation with books. We read Shades of Black by Sandra Pinkney and Happy in Our Skin by Fran Manushkin together.

We talked about how each of us looks different, has different talents to share and brings many different things to our classroom community. Also, we have many things that are the same because we’re all kids. We all want to be loved, to belong, to contribute, to learn.

We wanted to create beautiful images of our unique and different selves to hang on the wall, and we did so with lots of different creative things in our room. We also borrowed a mirror from our friends in Ms. Turken’s room so we could see some of the close-up details of our faces.

Now they hang along the top of our wall and we can see them smiling on us every day! We are definitely learning to celebrate the beautiful skin we live in, and appreciate how different we all are!