Firstgraderoundup : crafts

Showing posts with label crafts. Show all posts

I'm always looking for simple crafts to do during Easter season that are quick, cheap, and easy to do with any extra kids that may come on Easter Sunday.

Crucifixion Easter bracelets are my new favorite craft! And all you need are beads and pipe cleaners! Here's how we made them.

First, we used a black pipe cleaner. We put 12 beads on the pipe cleaner and put a space so that one side had 5 beads and the other side had 7 beads.

Then, we cut a pipe cleaner in half. We twisted it around the space between the two groups of beads.

Next, we put 3 red and white beads on each side of the half pipe cleaner and pushed the 12 beads next to the middle of the pipe cleaner cross we'd just made. We put the extra pipe cleaner behind the red and white beads...

...and twisted it in an "X" pattern around the middle of the cross.

Last, we twisted the remaining black pipe cleaner into a circle to make a bracelet! Easy, fast, and great fine motor practice too! :)

You can find the Easter Bible Story unit this craft goes with here as part of my Sunday School curriculum.

Whitney

Stained glass has always been a favorite of mine! So this year, we made stained glass crosses for Easter to hang on our refrigerator at home. This is a simple Easter craft that kids and adults can enjoy!

I printed out the stained glass cross from this Easter Bible story unit. Then, I just colored in the pieces using lots of bright colors.

Side note...do you have a favorite "strategy" for coloring in stained glass? Between this activity and the sidewalk chalk activity we did recently, I've learned that I like to color one color at a time. I use a crayon to color in two pieces and then move on to the next color.

But my seven year old colors one piece at a time, switching as he goes! It's fun to watch and see how each one of us color differently!

Okay... back on track!

After we color, we cut out the cross on the dotted lines to leave the Bible verse around the edge of the cross.

At this point, we backed ours on colored paper to hang on the fridge for lots of bright, Spring color!

But you can also back it on cardstock (or print the cross out on white cardstock) and punch a hole and tie a string through the top to make an ornament!

You can find this Easter Bible Story craft plus lots more in this "Jesus Died for Me" Easter Unit as part of my Sunday School curriculum.

Whitney

I love finding time during the Easter season to do crafts with my preschool Sunday School kids! This one is from our preschool Sunday School curriculum was new to us this year and we loved it!

We did not have Easter services at church this year because of CoVid-19, but my 7 year old and I did this craft at home anyway!

What You'll Need

The wonderful thing about this Easter Bible story craft is you can pretty much do it with things you have around the house. You'll need...

Lima beans
Yellow craft paint
Green and blue construction paper
Bible verse and tomb printables

Make Your Own

Once you have your materials ready, it's time to get started! Print out the bible verse and tomb printables from this Easter unit. I printed the bible verse printable on blue paper and the tomb on white cardstock.

Use a half sheet of green paper to glue to the bottom as the "grass."

Then, paint your hand yellow and put the handprint just an inch or two above the green paper so that the handprint will fit in between the "grass" and the verse. You may need to use a smaller amount of green paper and that's totally fine!

Next, glue the tomb on top of the grass and handprint sunrise.

Last, fill the stone tomb with lima bean stones. Use liquid glue, not a glue stick for this! :)

When it's finished, it will look something like this...

I hope you enjoy making these as much as we did! You can find this activity and many more in my Easter Bible Story Unit from my Year 3 preschool Sunday School curriculum.

Whitney

I love making rainbows to display in March! This March creation station activity makes a beautiful display around St. Patrick's Day, but is also easy enough for kindergartners to do on their own!

Rainbow Craft Materials & Set Up

At this creation station, I put the rainbow template and pot of gold copy, and I precut 1 inch strips of rainbow colored paper. And I make sure glue sticks and crayons are at the station too!

Rainbow Craft Directions

First, kids take a strip and wad it up into a tight ball. When you model this, show them how to wad it tightly using their pinching fingers.

Then, they un-wad the ball so that they have a wrinkly strip of paper. They may need to use two strips to cover the space for some colors.

Then, they simply use a glue stick or glue bottle to glue to wrinkled strip down. It will not all sit nicely on the paper and this is on purpose. It gives the rainbow a fun, 3-dimensional look!

Finally, they color the pot of gold, cut it out, and glue it to the base of the rainbow!

You can find this creation station activity and more for March here!

Whitney

I love celebrating Earth day with littles! I've done anything from planting trees with my class to planting seeds to flowers, to Earth day crafts! Today, let's chat about how to use q-tips to paint the earth.

What You Need

I love this craft because it's super easy, low prep and cheap! #winning

Here's what you'll need:

Earth printout
Q-Tips
Ink pads or paint

I used ink pads just because I think the prep and clean up is easier. This craft is set up for kinders to do independently at stations. Using paint means I have to go over and get their paint ready each day. But with ink pads, they can independently set that up on their own!

Earth Day Q-Tip Craft Steps

Once you are set up with the ink pads, it's time to stamp (or paint if you are using paint). All you need to do is simply put the q-tip in the ink pad and stamp away! You can get lots of stamps out of what dab of ink.

Basically, there are two ways I've done this. Use one q-tip and stamp away. You get this look in the picture below, but it takes much longer.

Or, grab a small bunch of q-tips and "group stamp."

This gives a slightly different look and it is much faster.

Either way is totally fine and both are GREAT fine motor skill practice. So, it's just a personal preference.

Here's the finished look! I love the unique, dotted look it gives! If you want to see what q-tip painting looks like with actual craft paints, you can find pictures of that in this blog post!

You can find this craft in the April Creation Station which is also included in my April Stations Bundle and in the year long bundle of Creation Stations.

Whitney

2nd grade Next Gen Science standards talk about Ecosystems. One big concept in this unit is interdependence! Here's a look at the book, activity and craft that I used to build understanding about interdependence within an ecosystem.

{This post includes affiliate links to support my chocolate addiction and my small corner of cyber space!}

We start by reading this awesome trade book about the cactus ecosystem in the desert.

As we read, we chart all of the biotic and abiotic parts in this ecosystem. I also add arrows to show how some of these parts depend on each other as well as the cactus.

Then, we do a cut and paste activity to show the interconnectedness of the cactus hotel.

Next, we write about our own cactus hotel. We brainstorm who we depend on in our lives and how we depend on them (mom for dinner, house for a warm place to stay...). And we also talk about anyone or anything that depends on us (pets for food, bedroom for cleaning...).

We also make this cute cactus craft to display with our writing.

Here's how I made this 3D cactus craft!

I cut out the templates from the ecosystems unit. I cut 3 large green ovals and two small green ovals. Plus, I cut 3 brown pots.

I folded the large ovals in half and then glued the halves together so that it made a 3D cactus.

I used a black crayon to add the lines and ridges.

Next, I cut small lime green triangles to add a few spikes to the cactus.

Finally, I added a pink tissue paper flower to the top and stapled the brown pots around the base.

This 3D cactus will stand up or you can put a string through a top hole and hang them! If you want to display the cactus with your cactus hotel writing, you can also make a 2D version to glue above the writing!

All of these templates, charts and activities can be found in this second grade Ecosystems Unit.

Whitney

Traditionally, in first grade, I've taught animal classification and the human body for our state science standards. But with the introduction of the Next Gen Science Standards, life science has shifted to organism structures and heredity. So, I've developed a new unit to align better with these newer standards. And I'm SUPER pumped about how we are learning our new big idea: "Organisms have tools for survival!"

Here's an overview of what's covered in our organisms unit.

{Affiliate links are included in this blog post to support this website and my chocolate addiction! :)}

Week 1: What Are Organisms?

The first week of the unit we learn a lot of vocabulary needed for this unit. We learn what the difference is between living and non-living things through this sort (a digital interactive version is available too!) and this fun organism song.

Then, we start charting what plants and animals can do, have, and need to survive. We finish this week by comparing plants and animals to gain a deeper understanding of these two categories of organisms.

Week 2: How Are Offspring Like Their Parents? How Do Offspring Learn To Survive?

During the first part of the second week, we learn how babies are like their parents. We read about and chart names for different animal babies and how they learn to survive. And we play find your partner with baby animals and their parents.

Then, we research our own traits that we get from our parents. We send home a family traits survey (with several options for atypical families with adopted or fostered children, etc...).

After the family traits survey homework is returned, we do a carousel activity to tally our trait data for everyone in our class by observing our inherited traits.

And during our math time, we graph our inherited traits!

Week 3: What Do Organisms Use To Survive?

This week we start off by learning about plant parts. But our focus is to go deeper and learn their jobs for helping the plant survive. We make a plant parts jobs flip book with this adorable craft option!

Then, we shift to animals and read about adaptations that animals have made to survive.

We set up adaptation stations around the room for kids to rotate through and explore and experience 8 different adaptations animals make. You can read more about this in depth in this blog post (coming soon!)

One of my favorite activities during these stations is matching animal adaptations to ways humans mimic those adaptations. It's a great way to build up that background knowledge for the upcoming STEM project later in the week!

STEM Challenge: Copy Cat

During the end of week 3, we work on our STEM challenge! This one is called copy cat because students are mimicking an organism adaptation to build something to solve a human problem. This challenge come straight from the Next Gen Standards.

I'm going to be honest here, ya'll. When I first saw this engineering standard, I was like, "What the heck????"

No lie. #realtalk

But once I got into creating this unit, I actually really, TRULY love this challenge now. I feel like we have set up our first graders with enough background knowledge, examples, and experiences with adaptations to help them be successful with this challenge.

Want to see how this challenge works exactly? And how to make it attainable for littles? Read this blog post for more detail! (coming soon!) Here's a sneak peak...