Winter Craft Day!

Wow, Thursday sure was a whirlwind. It was my first day taking the vast majority of the day by myself. My CT was working on other projects, prepping for Winter Craft Day and working on our bulletin board (Polar Express which requires us making a huge train to hold all of the photos of the second grade students, nearly 60 of them!). It was exciting, even though our day was so much different from normal with play preparation for Friday when our class was performing Johnny Appleseed and the book fair was here, which the kids absolutely loved. The book fair really makes me happy to see all of the students get so excited about seeing books. Granted some are not quality literature by any means, and some only like the pictures, but the excitement for books none the less was worth it. Makes me happy to be a teacher on those days!

So Winter Craft Day! First of all, thank goodness for parents who are able to volunteer! I didn't realize how much help they really can be!

Our craft day consisted of 5 stations:

1. Reindeer Ornaments
2. Reindeer Pots
3. Picture Ornaments
4. Door Hangers
5. Snacks and a winter story

All of the stations were very popular. I didn't hear any of the students complain about the project that was being done, even from the boys that think they are too cool for everything! :) At times the stations felt like controlled chaos, sometimes mostly chaos though. Recess definately helped calm the students down. Getting some of that excitement and pent up energy out of their systems really enabled the students to focus more on the projects at hand.

All in all, Winter Craft Day was successful and enjoyable, and not as much hassle as I was expecting. However, it was incredibly exhausting. Shuffling kids to and from stations every fifteen or twenty minutes and starting with a new group of even more excited students. At the recess break, the three parent volunteers and myself sat in the classroom for the first five minutes in silence, just regaining some energy and taking a few minutes to prepare for the next session of student artists. As exhausted as I was, I realized that my energy was going toward something that the students were really enjoying and were really engaged with so it was all worth the time and effort!

This craft day also helped me understand how effective stations are in student learning. To allow students to rotate through several different, and sometimes related, activities rather than requiring them to focus exclusively on one project is extremely effective. Students focus better when their gears can shift from one topic to another, so to speak, and often can avoid reaching the point of frustration in lower students because they get to experience several different activities in one time period.