Good Day Sunshine

Oh my goodness!  This just might be my most favorite art project ever!  We affectionately referred to it in class as our "awesome art project".  :)  I came across the idea on another wonderful teaching blog (for step by step directions please visit Oh Boy 4th Grade!) and just had to find a way to work it in to our curriculum.

As I shared previously, we have just finished reading Because of Winn-Dixie.  In the novel Gloria Dump shares with Opal many nuggets of wisdom.  One of which is that everyone has a personal "most important thing"  it's different for everyone, and you'll know it when you find it.  We took this idea as our jumping off point.  The children each picked one special word and they expressed their most special things through these bright, spectacular art projects.  Once again I am amazed by my second grade artists!

Character Traits and Winn-Dixie

* Disclaimer...  Please excuse the lack of photos these days.  We have just been so very busy I keep forgetting to snap pictures as we go.  But you all have great imaginations I'm sure! :)

We just finished a treasured book called Because of Winn-Dixie.  We zipped right through this read aloud because the kids were SO into it.  It's such a delight to see my sweet students get wrapped up in great stories!  This novel lends itself to rich meaningful conversations and the characters are so special.  Yesterday we learned all about character traits and played a little game involving the characters from Because of Winn-Dixie.  I created cards that shared things that the characters said and did in the story.  The students then matched the actions and words to the correct character and then told what character traits describe that character and why.  They had to have support for each character trait they selected and I was so impressed by their insight!  My favorite moment was when someone shared that a person's character traits can change over time.  What an important life lesson to learn!

After we talked all about the characters from the book, I then asked the students to think about the character traits that best describe themselves and why.  They took this task very seriously as they got to writing in their writing spiral.  Next week we are going to take these character traits and make make a very special project.  Stay tuned!
 

This lesson is available at my TPT store. :)