The Destitute Teacher

My current school recognises ANZAC Day (Remembrance Day) every year with a whole school assembly as close to the 25th of April as we can. The local RSA members come along and each class lays a 'wreath' dedicated to our fallen soldiers. The whole effect is just beautiful, and every year I am blown away by the variety of crafts each class presents. This year we worked with our buddy class to create some layered fabric poppies. I got the inspiration from this site here . Originally I had high ambitions and wanted the children to sew layers of eco-cloth together to create the poppies. My hopes were quickly dashed, and we resorted to hot glue gunning the layers together. Nice and fast and probably more effective... most sewn efforts were a disaster. We keep our hot glue guns on plastic plates. The plates catch the drips and when the children glue the gun to the plate, it easily peels back off again. The class then brainstormed how we wanted to present our poppies. We chose to g...

As mentioned in the post before, this term we have an Arts focus. So I inquired of my students... what area/media would you like to focus on? 21 lovely littlies all put their hands up and said... knitting. Now I love crochet, do knit some times and am an avid crafter. I must admit I was thrilled that they want to tackle knitting, and immediately began to plan the unit. I plan to integrate content on primary/ secondary colors, brights v.s. pastels, and how our color choices suit our purpose. I hope that we will get to start off with making some small finger puppets as a learn to knit project. Teaching 21 six and seven year olds to knit is quite daunting, but i'm hoping that we will get to the dizzying heights of yarn-bombing before the term is through. Perhaps a little too ambitious. I decided that inspiration was key, and so have set about yarn bombing our own classroom with hand-crocheted items.  Rainbow bunting now hangs along our back wall. The wall is divi...

Crafting almost always requires glue. Hot glue, paste, PVA... we school teachers love them all. However, they can be a messy wee substance to manage. So here is a teeny tiny tip for keeping your PVA manageable... milk bottle tops! Milk bottle tops are plentiful, free and don't take up much storage space. They are easy to collect, and are darn useful. When using them as mini glue pots, I like them because they don't hold much (less waste), you can throw them out after one use (easy clean-up), and they are easy to prepare, so you can have many of them scattered around the room if necessary. In the photo, I have used cotton wool buds (new ones) as glue applicators, and found them really good. In the past, I have also used scraps of cardboard, strips cut from ice-cream container lids... almost anything, except paintbrushes. Glue tends to ruin paintbrushes very quickly.

Yay! I love Fathers Day! Another occasion to get out the crafty materials and create cutesy little crafts with my little lovelies. I'm probably going to repeat myself endlessly here, but.... there is a BIG place for crafts in the classroom. Cutting and sticking skills are pretty shocking these days (yes, I am old), even in my nine year old students. Pride in presentation is also something that is often lacking, and little craft projects are just PERFECT for this! For Fathers Day this year, we followed the crafty theme of popsicle stick photo frames (as seen on Mothers Day). This time the frame said "My Dad is a star", rather than the jigsaw decorations. I set my Fathers Day gear up with three tasks... a card, a 'greatest dad in the world' certificate, and the craft table. The craft is a compulsory activity, while the other two are optional. However, there is the expectation that the children will spend the entire lesson MAKING, rather than talking or mucking aro...

I make it my personal mission to make sure that craft projects are completed to commemorate all possible occasions in my classroom. We celebrated Mothers Day on the 8th of May this year in NZ, and this was the perfect time to craft our little hearts out. Mothers Day crafts have two pre-requisites: 1. They must look homemade 2. They must be darned cute. I found this craft somewhere on the internet. I am sure it was www.activityvillage.co.uk, but I can't find the link anywhere. If this is your original craft idea, please leave a link to the reference in the comments section! This photo frame is cute as a button, costs very little and is perfect for recycling jigsaw puzzles that are missing pieces. Note: the little scrap of paper says "I love you to pieces".... so, so, so cute! First, take your popsicle sticks. Each student will need four popsicle sticks to make the frame for their photograph. Lay them out so they make a square (or other shape), and hot glue at the co...

Easter is really really close now and I am getting extremely excited. It could be the crazy sugar highs that are hitting me in that direction, but I think that it is mainly the Easter sales that I get excited about (and the copious amounts of chocolate, but that is another blog altogether). Last year in the Easter sales I picked up an Easter egg mould for $1 from Spotlight. Totally exciting, this bad boy means I can mould 12 (half) eggs at a time. So as we approached Easter this year I started wracking my brain for a little moulded craft idea for my class to complete. I came up with Easter plaster of paris magnets.   Having only one mould and 25 students, I decided that I would mould and dry the eggs myself. This turns the activity into a definite craft rather than art activity, but was very managable and easy to complete in a short space of time. I also wanted the magnets to be an Easter gift to my students, rather than several weeks of tedious work. I made up 31 eggs, which ga...