Collaborative Projects

We love to participate in Collaborative Projects with other classes.

I mentioned a couple of projects earlier in the year here and here.

After much waiting Shoeless and Bark showed up while we were out on Spring Break. These are traveling pets from Projects By Jen. They had been traveling to classrooms around the US since August sharing information about Lewis and Clark.

They arrived from the midwest with some books and a journal with entries from previous classes. We only got a chance to read the first two because it was testing time and the third one was a longer chapter book. The two titles were well suited to compare different text covering the Journey Lewis and Clark.

We also watched a great video on Discovery Education titled Lewis and Clark: Tools for Survival. It gave tons of details about the trip.

After gathering information from various resources the students set to work creating 1st person postcards from the perspective of someone on the journey. They used the PhotoCard by Bill Atkinson app on the iPads.

 

 Here were a couple final products.

Our final one of the year was Picture It - Mondrian with a Twist. Last year was the first year Jen did this project and Monet was the inspiration. This year the picture was inspired by Piet Mondrian's work.

Piet Mondrian portrait

also inspired by Mondrian

 The image was divided into 24 parts. Different classes within a group were assigned one piece to recreate and send to all the other class. The guidelines were that everyone was supposed to make sure only red, blue, yellow, white and black crayons were used. Since ours was a relatively basic piece we got out the rulers and recreated it from scratch using detailed measurements and then we colored them.

The classes ranged from K-6 and they were scattered around North America. When classes sent out their pieces to the 23 other classes in their group they included an information sheet. This sheet included tidbits about class size (and gender breakdown) as well as things they wanted to share about their class and school,

This was our completed picture.

If you would like to see what projects are in the works for next year go to the Projects By Jen Calendar and sign up for the email update. That way you will know as soon as they are posted.

Also, If you would like to join the next Global Read Aloud in the fall click here and sign up. The book for middle grades is Out of My Mind. I just bought it at the Scholastic Warehouse sale but I haven't read it yet.

Traveling pets

We had some visitors that arrived on the first day of school and they hung around for the first three weeks. The visitors that I'm speaking about were Snail and Whale from Stephen Baker's class "3D" in New Zealand. It was so fun to host a traveling pet. The kids were super excited and took tons of pictures while they were here.

Here is the post they wrote about the visit. If you would like to sign up for a visit you can find Stephen's email here.

Now Snail and Whale are in the mail on their way to Iowa to continue their adventures.

Last year my class hosted Davo the Tasmanian Devil from Australia. The kids also had a blast with that visitor. While visiting the classroom he was able to see some end of the year activities and join in on field day. He was only able to stay less than a week so unfortunately he didn't get to go home with as many students . I was amazed however that with a little planning he made it to a church sleep-in, Taste of Marietta, a Cinco de Mayo party, a soccer game and a girl scout activity all in one weekend.

 I made an adorable box for sending him on to his next stop.

Later on this year we will be hosting Shoeless and Bark which is a Projects by Jen activity. You can read about it here. Unfortunately the registration is now closed but you can check out some more of her GREAT projects on the calendar or by clicking the image below. Last year we participated in a bunch of her projects. The O.R.E.O. project will be starting up next week so it is open up for registration right now. My class has done this one for about 5 years but this year is the 100th anniversary of Oreo cookies so it should be extra fun. The holiday card exchange is always a great one!  You should definitely go check out her site.

Thanks for stopping by.