Fine Motor Skillz Bracelets

Oh yeah, that’s skills with a Z!!!
So I noticed that many of my Kinders were having some trouble with writing their names and it wasn’t that they didn’t know the letters but more that those sweet little hands couldn’t control their pencil or crayon.  So we started practicing some fine motor skills.  I found some great ideas at Hands On As We Grow.  We practiced tracing lines, tracing our names, writing our names on our own, sorting beads, and stringing those beads onto pipe cleaners for some beautiful bracelets.  We had so much fun it almost makes me want to be a Kindergarten teacher!  

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Calder On A Wire

I was looking for something new to do with my 3rd graders (my fellow bloggers never disappoint) and came across this cute lesson at Smartest Artist. I did a lesson on Calder my first couple years teaching and then I skipped it the last few years. When I saw this lesson, I was inspired to try again. I had the kids create sketches of their plans in the first class and next week we will attempt to actually create our ideas.
This was my example of how to create the diagram for their sculpture. I was kind of surprised that they had no clue how to do this. Yay, Bloom’s Taxonomy!