Martin Luther King Jr. Day January 15, 2007
Posted by lmhartley in : Seasonal, history , add a comment 
Martin Luther King Jr., originally uploaded by ppv918.
Today is MLK Day in the USA. It’s a day of service and giving to the community. There are lots of related resouces at ActivityVillage (a UK site) which might also be useful for Black History Month in the UK.
Patricia writes:
Our bulletin board for Martin Luther King, Jr. The children wrote down their dreams on the wings of the doves. I think it came out beautiful. Let me know what you think.
I like it very much and I think the simple design works well. What do others think?
A Poet’s Paintbox - what do displays mean to children? January 14, 2007
Posted by lmhartley in : literacy , add a comment
That was a year 5 (age 10) class being interviewed about a display that had built up in the classroom over the course of half a term. I think it’s interesting that they took pride in their work and continued to look at the display even after it had been up for a while. Perhaps the people who voted for
in the recent poll on this post were onto something.
Snow Dudes January 11, 2007
Posted by lmhartley in : literacy, winter , 1 comment so far 
Snow Dudes, originally uploaded by CharmingMilo.
I like this jolly selection of Snow Dudes. They are just the thing to cheer up a dull January day. Debbie writes:
We read a book in my classroom called “SnowDude” by Daniel Kirk. In the story, the kids make a “snow dude” who comes to life and runs away. He snowboards and acts wild. I had my students make their own snow dudes with mini books to match. This is the bulletin board outside my classroom.
Update:
And for anyone else who would like to make them: I used two patterns- one for the pants and one for the snow dude head/body. This way he looked more like the character from the story, with a big belly that hangs over his pants. The kids were allowed to choose whatever color paper they wanted for the pants.
The story of Snow Dude is also similar to The Gingerbread Man, so it makes for a great comparison lesson!
Futher Update:
I am getting ready to take the Snow Dudes bulletin board down to make room for the Valentine decorations and February projects. But I thought I’d snap a picture of my favorite little dude before I did so. The mini book with him says his snow dude likes to “belly slide down skiing hill and leave the other people running behind.
Ted Harrison Art Wall January 3, 2007
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Originally uploaded by Margaritka Ted Harrison Art Wall
Ted Harrison is a Canadian artist. Originally from Co Durham (UK) he has lived and taught in England, New Zealand and Canada.
I think the children have done an excellent job here, emulating both the simplicity of his style and his vivid pallete. The work has been very sympathetically mounted with a narrow border. The designs have then been placed quite close together. It reminds me of a quilt. I’m not sure I’d have put it together in quite the same way but have a look at it full size and see what you think.
I don’t usually like multi-coloured borders but this one works well. Perhaps that is because the colours echo those used in the children’s work.
India December 21, 2006
Posted by lmhartley in : geography , add a comment 
India, originally uploaded by LindaH.
This display is a work in progress. I’ll post updates as it builds up.
We painted the map on white paper then cut it out & put it up on the back wall. First lesson next term we’ll get the children to use atlases to help me put the labels on it. I’ve already printed & laminated them all.
Painting the map caused lots of excitement about the topic and some of our visual & kinesthetic learners enjoyed helping. It was interesting to see them workout how visual information could be transferred from the atlas to the larger scale painting.
“You need to move that border a bit this way miss”
“It curves more like that ”
Putting on the mountains led to a long discussion about whether they really were marked in exactly the right spots on the atlas or if it was
“..just to show you there are mountains in this general bit.”
I promised that next term we’ll go on GoogleEarth and have a look at the satelite images to do a comparision.
All this good learning went on not in formal lesson time but on the second last morning of term. The children were intrigued by what I was doing and just got themselves involved. (Interestingly enough they were exactly the children I would have predicted would enjoy this sort of approach from their learning skills survey.) I wish more of school could be like this!
I hope we’ll also be able to access the Chembakolli children’s blog.
