Each year, I like to do something different for the gift the students give to their parents during the holiday season.  I like to keep it less holiday focused and more family focused, as I truly don't know what holidays the kids celebrate (or don't celebrate) at home.  Because of this, I tend to steer clear of ornaments or traditional Christmas-themed faire.   So this year, I decided to do a Silhouette All About Me.  This project, which we did for our holiday family gift this year, actually would be awesome for the beginning of the year or Mother's/Father's Day...and I think I may switch it up next year and do just that!  Anyway, here is what we did. We began by brainstorming some activities that the kids liked to do.  These could be anything from playing a musical instrument to reading to playing video games to joining in a kickball game.  The only thing I asked them to really think about is how could they show themselves doing that particular activit......

Each year, I try to have my students create a gift for their parents that showcases their creativity, is something the families will remember, and won't cost me an arm and a leg.  This year, I blew myself out of the water with our end product ;)   I really didn't have a lot of time to have the kids create a present this year.  With everything else going on, the holiday just snuck up on me.  So I needed something quick.  I went to the Dollar Tree and picked up 23 $1 frames and a roll of foil.   I asked the kids to draw (on paper first) a family portrait.  They could draw whatever that meant to them, but I basically wanted a picture of their family in some sort of background.  The kids were so creative in their interpretation of this.  Some drew winter scenes.  Others drew their house.  Still others just drew their families outside. Then, they transferred that drawing onto the glass of the frame using black sharpies to ......

Creating holiday gifts for the parents of my 5th graders is probably the most stressful part of December for me.   I want them to have something that is really great and fun, but I also want it to take as little time as possible from the academics that we really do need to cover.  So this year, when a fantastic parent of mine volunteered to help with the project, I jumped on it! She had a great idea to create little ornaments out of pinecones.  She walked her neighborhood, found pinecones, and brought in a few for each student. The kids painted them either white or green, then decorated with sparkles, sequence, or other colors of paint.  They used tempra paint, so it was something we already had at school....and they came out AWESOME! Here are a few.  We then added a little ribbon hook and a sign that said "Happy Holidays 2014" or a more specific holiday greeting if they wished.  (I don't have pictures of that...sorry!) These took abo......

This week was our last week before winter break.  We spent a majority of the week finishing up our Oregon Trail unit, practicing our recorders for the holiday show, and continuing with our Mixtures and Solutions unit in science. However what I am most thrilled about this week is the parent gift project we were working on.  It is simply magnificent (if I do say so myself!)  As the kids were finishing them, I couldn't take my eyes off the final product.  (I love it so much, I am actually making a similar version as grandparent gifts with my own children.) I modeled this project after those personalized frames you can purchase that have letter cutouts to put pictures in.  Since I didn't have the time, or money, to get frames for each of my students, I thought we would create them.  Here is the final product: I told you they were awesome ;) Here is a step by step of the process we went through to make these. The students started by creating th......