This is my first year in 2nd grade. Do you think this is too babyish for 2nd graders to make for their parents? I thought of asking parents to send in a list of important dates for each month so that the students can fill in birthdays, holidays they celebrate, etc. on their calendars.
Or, I'd love to hear other ideas you have that you make with your students for their parents.
I have a fillable calendar for free on my site. Each month has a poem and kids draw pictures for each month. It's in the "C" section- http://www.bainbridgeclass.com/files.htm
I do 2-4 holiday ornament type crafts. I use them to decorate the room and then send them home with the kids. They are still young enough to love the crafts. I don't do anything large/time-consuming though. I like to do a couple ornaments that way the kid has something to give each parent, if they are no longer together.
Christina, I just want to say a big, fat, THANK YOU for freely sharing your creative ideas and projects with us. I think I am going to try the calendar this year. I do get a little nervous when I think of dealing with all the paper of those calendars, so if you have any management tips on how you approach these calendars, please let me know. I have one little boy who could spend a month on one page because he is so slow and very perfectionistic about his artwork.
Thanks!
Here's my system for keeping up with unfinished papers all year long and it's works very well for these calendars. I have a one gallon ziplock bag for each child. It has cardboard inside to make it stand up, the bottom corners are clipped so air won't get trapped inside and they are all placed into a powdered detergent box. ALL the pages they need to decorate are in their bag. When they have time, they work on their pages. Unfinished pages are in front of the cardboard, finished are behind the cardboard.
I will print off all the pages when we go back to school next week and they will have almost 3 weeks to work on them.
I had a child once who had a few pages he didn't complete. Sorry, but he had time. I put his calendar together anyway.
I'm a little confused about the cardboard ... am I understanding you to say that you put a piece of cardboard into every sts ziplock bag, and all the bags are put into a powdered detergent box?
Yes. The bags need something to keep them stiff so they will stand up in the box, easy to retrieve. Sorry I don't have a picture. The bags stand up straight, almost like file folders, but nothing can fall out of them, as would happen with file folders. They're great.
Actually, right now, I think I'm using super stiff card stock which was used as backing for test materials. It's as stiff as cardboard.
Christina, I love your calendar and would like to do it. The little poems are cute but I am from Canada so I would like to edit the July one. Is there any way I can do that?
I'm not Christina, but I'll tell you what I do when I need to edit something like this.
I'd put in the dates and print 1 copy. I'd then type another poem/whatever that would fit into the space where the original poem exists. Tape the new poem over the original and make that your month of July page. Make copies for the kids to use and keep this new original in a file so it won't have to be remade next year!
It is extremely time consuming to make all of those fillable boxes and if I try to edit the file, I'll have to re-do all the boxes on every month! I'll try and see if I can append to the file and add a different July page to the end of the file, but until I can do that- multigrade has the right idea!
thanks for your help gals. I know how everyone is very busy. I will try the first suggestion first. Dont worry about it right now, Christina! I know you are busy!
Hi Christina! I love your fill-in calendar and would like my students to make it for their parents. I noticed when I was filling in the dates that September and December don't have enough squares for the number of days. I was looking for a drawing tool that would let me divide the squares in two and add the other dates, but none are available in Adobe. Any suggestions for doing this other than printing the pages, drawing the lines myself, and cutting and pasting the appropriate dates?
Any suggestions for doing this other than printing the pages, drawing the lines myself, and cutting and pasting the appropriate dates?
We are working on this. I'm having my students write in the numbers themselves.Yes, it's taking some time, but they need the practice. We can do 2 months/sitting. I made a transparency of one of the pages so I can show them where to begin and end each month's dates, so I won't have trouble (maybe!) showing them how to divide those few squares when we get to them.
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11-22-2011, 09:19 PM
