Bulletin board.
Fifth Graders enjoyed their sculptural drip
paintings modeled after the works of Holton Rower.
This was a fun line study, where students could see the lines in motion. Once they finished this project they were asked to
write a paragraph on the process or their opinion of the artwork. This is a new procedure I am currently asking 5th grade to
do after each project. Soon 4th and 3rd will be asked to make their artist statements for their artwork as well.
we read the book The Dot. A cute story about a little girl who discovers art
through a simple series of dot paintings. The students were able to paint their own dot, or not-a-dot, with watercolors. This
was a nice simple opportunity for students to use paints and learn the expectations for using watercolors.
for parent volunteer spot
Twitter door- have a laminated strip for every child and they get time to update status about something
they learned, liked or happened during school that day! Gets them writing and ties in something they're
probably already interested in!
Students must highlight their name before putting it in the tray. Great way to make sure all papers have
names! LOVE THIS!! I am so doing this because they always forget!
Magnetic spice jar for Box Top saver.
golden spatula award for good lunch room behavior
Wrap 3 cereal boxes together. Great idea for storing paper
Binder Clips: A perfect unexpected use
Wonderful idea!
beginning of the year each student is issued a dry
erase marker, a black sock (used as an eraser), and a whiteboard. They store these items in a large
stretchable book cover
Name map:
their name or shows things about them.
Things they love about
First we took our thumbprints. The clearest prints were not made with ink but with pencil! We
colored a small piece of paper heavily with pencil lead, then rubbed our finger on it. Then we
carefully placed our finger on the sticky side of clear packing tape. We placed the tape, sticky side
down, onto another piece of paper.
We scanned those into our computer, enlarged them to cover a full sheet of paper, and printed them
as lightly as possible. We tried to print them dark and then use a light tracer or window to follow the
lines on another piece of paper placed over it but that proved too difficult and time consuming.
Now all that is left to do is start writing! Write anything that comes to mind about yourself making
sure you follow the lines of your fingerprint. This can get pretty crazy as fingerprints either arch,
loop, or whorl and not all lines follow right next to each other. Have fun writing and deciding where
to go next. Once it’s filled in, it is a unique page all about you!
First day of school activity:
Get work done by playing
Homeworkopoly
Thanks to all of our reader suggestions, we are now able to make
the Homeworkopoly game board available. Measuring 35 inches
square, it’s large enough to use on a bulletin board. If you have
suggestions for improving the design or adding to our stack of
Chance cards, please email us. Thanks to Teachnet
contributors Karen Hull and Ketrina Jordan for their
suggestions.
More bulletin board art is located at the Teachnet Classroom Decor page
Download Game Board with street names.
Download Game Board without street names (make up your own for your city)
Download Chance Cards (includes blank cards for making your own)
Homeworkopoly Instructions
Homeworkopoly is a fun way to encourage children to do their homework! Here are some basic
instructions, but feel free to use your own judgement and change things around to suit your class
needs. We have tried to leave off negative things such as “Go to jail” in order to keep this
experience as positive as possible.
In order for a student to play the game, he or she must complete their homework from the night
before and hand it in to the teacher. This is how the student moves around the game board. If the
student does not have their homework finished, they don’t get their chance to shake the die and
move for the day (with exceptions, of course). Throughout the year, day by day you keep the
game going. By starting at the beginning of the year everyone gets into it and by the end of the
year everyone is doing their homework regularly. Listed below are detailed instructions for
Homeworkopoly…
Setup
1. To make game tokens, print off our education clipart, write a student’s name under the picture,
then pin on the board. Rolling the die before starting will spread students around the board, if
you like.
2. Game pieces may be tacked directly to the board, or outside the board to preserve the playing
field.
3. Depending on what version you have chosen to print off the web site, you may need to write
in the street names. This can be fun for your students as well. If you choose to laminate the game
board pieces you could let the children rename the streets periodically.
4. Using one die will slow their travel around the board.
5. Print the “Chance” and “Community Lunchbox” cards and cut them out. There are extras if
you have other ideas to use for them. Just write them in! (If you have business card holders, these
would work great for holding the cards up on your bulletin board for easy access.)
Getting Started
1. When a student brings in any homework from the night before, have them go over to the
board, roll the die and move. Each student will do this in the morning when their homework is
handed in if they have done the assigned homework.
2. The students will continue to do this throughout the year. It never has to end.
3. Deal with special spaces as the students land on them.
4. Having a rotating “Game Show Host” to keep check on the board as students move will make
your job easier.
Special Spaces
* MYSTERY PRIZE – When a student lands on this space, they can pick a prize from a pencil
box or maybe the teacher could have little grab bags with the mystery prize in them.
* BRAIN BINDERS -Printable, foldable paper puzzles that range from very easy to very
challenging.
* GAME SPOT – The game spot is used for playing games from your own classroom.
* FREE HOMEWORK – The student gets a free homework pass for the night when landing on
this space. (Usually not a problem with happening too often, if so, check it out. Watch closely
when moving around the board.)
* TAKE A SEAT ON THE BUS – When a student lands here, they go to the yellow square
diagonally across the board and sit there. When on this square, the teacher can have this student
read to the class aloud, do problems on the chalkboard, or pass out milk, for example. These are
just a few examples of what the student could do, feel free to use your own ideas.
* GO – When passing go, the student may receive a little prize, such as picking a piece of
sugarless gum or little trinket out of the pencil box of goodies, whatever the teacher thinks is an
appropriate prize.
along with google search stories lesson
Falling for Foreshortening
Students learn about the concept of foreshortening through this fun drawing activity.
Foreshortening is the optical illusion that occurs when a part of something moves from one part of
space to another. For example... and bridge travels from right in front of us, to far away from us on
the other side of a river. The same thing can happen on a smaller level with human limbs. For this
project students traced their feet and hands on a paper. They then drew their arms, legs, body and
head to create the illusion that the body was further away then the feet and hands. The images all
end up looking like the subject is falling toward the viewer.
Grade: 5th grade
Time: two 60 min classes
Materials:
12"x18" white paper
pencils
Sharpie markers
crayons
table top twitter: respond to a book they are reading.