Sunday, October 2, 2011

All About Me T-Shirt

How on earth is September already over??? I feel like I haven't even had a chance to catch my breath and now I have to change my calendar?! Good thing I love October. Crisp air, apple picking, pumpkin spice lattes, tall boots, chunky sweaters, Halloween, shall I continue?

Anyways, I wanted to share an activity that I did with my kiddos in the first week of school. I have a hard time finding 'back to school' activities that are cool enough for my middle schoolers. After some blog stalking therapy, I found a project that the kids loved.

Lindsay from My Life as a Fifth Grade Teacher  had a great project on her blog that was just right for my kiddos. It's perfect for those first few days that are super busy but also have too much lag time in between teaching procedures, but you could also do this for a book report or student of the week.

I created a tshirt template by drawing one, or twenty-five, on poster board and gave the kids the template that was not cut out. I figured that they might hack up the tshirt if they weren't careful with the scissors and I am too OCD to let that happen wanted them to look nice when I hung them in the hallway. Each student had to come up with words and pictures that represented them and draw them on their tshirts.  When they were finished, I cut them out and hung them in the hallways, using a clothesline and clothespins. LOVE this!




The only thing I would have done differently, is put up a light blue background, so that it looked like the sky. I already had green up and that's that!

5 comments:

  1. These are so much fun! I used to have a coworker who would do something similar to this on the first day of school and have them all posted by the end of the day as part of her "Welcome Back" bulletin board.

    Jen
    Runde's Room

    ReplyDelete
  2. They turned out tooooo cute!! Some of my kids seriously did not get the concept on the first day of school but yours look great!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the project idea, Lindsay! Some of my kids didn't get the concept either.. those are the tshirts that are just colored in without any rhyme or reason. I just let them go with the flow because it was their way of expressing themselves. This is such a flexible project anyways, so I pick my battles :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love this idea! I think my 6th graders would love it! Having 60 of them though, I would have a hard time putting them up somewhere since I do not have a bulletin board in the hall. I guess I could hang them from the ceiling or something in my room. Thanks for sharing!

    Katie
    Adventures of a 6th Grade Teacher

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Miss P!

    This is great. You are right! It is hard to find activities with enough "flavor" to keep the older kids interested (No coloring little apples for these big guys!)

    I am so glad there are other fifth and sixth grade bloggers out there. My heart sings every time I read a post and think, "That's just like us!"

    About the green background: Just tell yourself: This is the grassy field--which rises as a hill behind the clothesline... The sky is out of the picture because it is up above... What a pretty green field!

    I love the shirts AND the clothespins!

    Kim
    http://joyin6th.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete