Group 6 - Pimp My Neigborhood, originally uploaded by Red Colander.

Just look at the wonderful things this school in Amsterdam have been getting up to!
Nienke says:

Our entire school just finished a project around the theme “I Live In… Amsterdam”. Every class examined a different subject.

The youngest kids (Group 1/2) made pieces of art and placed them around the school, they also examined animals that live around the school.

Group 3/4 (Grade 1/2) looked at buildings/roofs in Amsterdam.

Group 5 (Grade 3) went to the film museum, made a movie of grade 1/2 working and also did research of animals in the city.

Group 6 (my class, Grade 4), did the project “Pimp My Neighborhood” (’pimp mijn buurt’). They had a workshop in making photos, they made photos of ugly places in the neighborhood, made drawings of how to improve these place, they made statues of LEGO and K’NEX and they crafted items to pimp up the hood….

Group 7 (Grade 5) looked into the VOC (East-Indies Trading Compagny), did a VOC-walk in Amsterdam and made a radio play.

Group 8 (Grade 6) looked at the streetnames in the neigborhood, which are all names of people that died in World War II, and wrote about their lives. They also made sculptures about peace.

In the end, all the children of the school gave a presentation to (grand)parents, friends, classmates and kids from other grades.

Have a look at the slideshow of everything else they did too.

Originally uploaded by Kardon

This inspiring display of animals and habitats was spotted by Tom Barrett at the Perlethorpe Education Centre, Newark, Nottinghamshire. Perlethorpe is an outdoor education centre which specialises in school visits. Based in the old village school on the Thoresby Estate in North Nottinghamshire the centre provides schools with a wide range of habitats to explore. These include a lake, river, farmland, woods, village and parkland. Like most outdoor ed. centres there are also classroom based activities which are linked to the National Curriculum and the QCA.

Tom added some notes to explain the making of the display:

Overhanging tree is made with some camouflage netting and leaves.

Information cards have been added to each habitat/animal.

Real bark 3D tree

There are diagrams and illustrations about the different animal homes.

Each animal is painted beautifully and attached in a way to give some depth to the display.

Leaves (real and made) form a nice border.

It could easily be adapted for classroom use, perhaps using children’s work to provide the information and diagrams. For me it is the 3d element that really makes this display magical. Click though to the large version to see more of the detail.

Here’s some “children’s voice” about their display work in action P6 at Loirston School have been blogging about how they made their display about climates. Good work!

» Coping with Climate Project wall Display Primary 6 at Loirston
Coping with Climate Project wall Display

February 21, 2008

We made a wall display by splitting into groups and making a part of the wall display each. The four climates are the Desert, Rain Forest, Polar and the Woodland.

Model and Diorama, originally uploaded by Mulsanne.

Today’s classroom display has an environmental theme in honour of Blog Action Day. I love this project which was done as part of the International Polar Year .

Dee, the teacher writes:

I began with a classroom standard, a KWL chart. On the KWL chart, students first listed what they knew (K) about Antarctica. Next, they listed questions they wanted (W) answered. Eventually, they would list what they learned (L) on the last part of the chart. The students asked some very good questions. Where do icebergs come from? What do blue whales eat in the waters surrounding Antarctica? How tall are emperor penguins? How did Shackleton and his men survive being trapped in ice? Why don’t fish freeze in the cold waters? What’s on the ocean floor? These were just a few of the questions they listed.

Not content with getting groups doing lots of online and book based research the children were able to follow and interact with the expedition team on their blog. The display came about because:

……we decided we wanted a visual representation to go along with our research. “Our Visit to The Ice” was created to provide us an avenue for artistic expression.

And it certainly did that! Have a look at all these detailed models:


My particular favourite is a model of Shacklton’s Endurance trapped in the ice:

But the penguins are cute too

I think my students would agree that “Our Visit to The Ice” was the next best thing to a field trip to Antarctica.

I chose this display because I can’t think of anything better to be exploring with children than the wonders of such a unique and threatened environment. This is one of those projects that brings the unfamiliar to life for children and gives opportunities for deep learning. Those children will remember this project and I hope their generation will forgive ours for not taking better care of this fragile and special place.
Note Any earnings from today’s post will be donated to Common Ground a UK based charity. (As of 16/10/07 = $3)

Update: If any UK schools fancy doing something similar there are some UK teachers heading South in a few weeks . You can follow their exploits here and here - you can also find lots of lovely resources in their blog sidebars. If you create any displays based on the project please let me know