Looking for a group activity that can brighten up the classroom?  Try Colorific’s Giant Colour in Posters at 76 x 51cm large they are great for group work, and with Christmas on the way a good filler activity for early finishers or whilst other end of year activities ‘disrupt’ the classroom.

Colorific Giant Colour in Posters

3 different design groups to choose from:

• Christmas ~ 3 each of 4 designs
• Pets ~ 3 each of cute puppy, kitten, bunny & bird
• Transport ~ 3 each of boat, car, train, plane

The quality of the paper these posters are printed on is brilliant – able to withstand wet painting and gluing without disintegrating. The images are bold and simple, leaving it up to students to add the finer details with a thick marker pen before coloring, should they wish to, totally customizing the basic page.

At a huge 76cm x 51cm they are approximately 8 x A4 sheets! Their large size makes them perfect for collaborative work as up to 4 students may work on them at once.

As with our Giant Greetings art speak above, they can be decorated in such a multitude of ways that students can really learn about colour and pattern to fill in spaces.

Try using just one colour and white and having students mix the paint down each time they paint a new area – these can look quite striking when completed. Or fill the entire space with bright marker pens and shapes and squiggles only. This is quite slow, but really great fun for students who are perfectionists and it can help them to let go of the result a little and enjoy the squiggly process.

Halloween is an ‘event’ that is certainly growing in participation here in Australia, and regardless of your opinion of its practice, most children have heard of it and are curious and it is a fun time for having a bit of spooky art fun!

It is a learning exercise to perhaps do some research online, naturally Wikipedia has something to say about the origins of Halloween and a google search will reveal many more sources of information, there are also many children’s story books around the theme too.

First super spooky must-have is polystyrene balls – these can be made into spiders, pumpkins, ghostly bodies, creepy bloodshot eyeballs…all connected with stems, painted or left ghostly white, given some moving eye action and suspended from the rafters to bob around…a quick fun activity.

Ginormous Brain Noodles make fabulous hairy scary spiders….ohh imagine those big legs…creeping towards you!  The bright colours are great – just add a big polystyrene ball for the body and loads of coloured moving eyes! Ahhhhhh…..

Dough Worx makes great pumpkins without the carving! Have students make a hollowed out shape and cut the spooky features and if you leave the dough to harden for a few days they will be able to put a tea-light candle inside for the same spooky effect – just don’t make the lid for the top!

Our final suggestion is to split the class into groups and have them create some characters (not too scary please!) make their own Halloween comedy skits! Use the cardboard faces to create some fabulous costume effects – you could talk to students about traditional ‘English’ pantomimes where boys played girls and girls played boys and the masks and costumes were all totally over-exaggerated for visual gags.  The cardboard faces are excellent for creating a range of over the top emotions as they are blank apart from the eye holes.

So whether you wish to focus on the pagan all hallows eve origins, the christian all saints day origins or just enjoy a bit of creepy crafty fun…Halloween is on the way…BOO!!!

Sequential art, otherwise known as comics, can be extremely successful in getting students to understand concepts and facts such as historical events, mathematical concepts, grammar, story structure, and about getting to the point of a story quickly & succinctly (something most young children need to develop skills in).

Visit http://www.teachingcomics.org/ for more resources and ideas.

Read the energy of your class and see where the lesson takes you. Brainstorm ideas for superheroes or superpowers, ask loads of questions and watch the characters develop. What sort of sidekick do they need? Where is their secret headquarters? Who are their arch enemies? Create a story that contains superpowers, sidekicks, epic battles and maybe even a rescue mission.

The lesson plan page at Teaching Comics has some good ideas and in particular go to the ‘Handout’ page for the download called ‘3 Act Diagram’ that will help with an explanation on planning.

Use the Colorific Healthy People Silhouettes for superhero action stunt inspiration – have students choose one then decorate them as part of their project.

Kids will have so much fun with these little beauties! Just pop a marker pen into the holder, position so that the air jet passes over the tip and you get some fantastic airbrush blending effects.

The large barrel bulb is great fun to squeeze and very easy for young children to operate, it is not stiff or difficult even for small hands. Use stencils to create beautiful spritzed coloured scenes or decorative backgrounds. Have students cut their own shapes out of paper and use them to create scenes. Or use paper punches for funky shapes.

Have you ever done paintings where students blow through straws to spread the thinned paint or ink? Save all that and use Spritzers instead!

Finally – hot day? They’re great fun for a burst of air on your face! ☺

Yay for teachers!

Internationally World Teacher’s Day is celebrated on the first Friday in October. However as this is usually during Australian school holidays, Australia celebrates the day on the last Friday in October of each year.

The day provides an opportunity to draw public attention to the important role of teachers within our communities. Celebrated in over 100 countries World Teacher’s Day acknowledges the efforts of teachers in an increasingly complex,  multicultural and technological society.

It is a day on which students, parents and community members can demonstrate their appreciation for the contributions that teachers have made to their community. (source www.edna.edu.au)

• Maybe you could discuss with students about teaching as a career and brainstorm together on the whiteboard all the different things teachers do for students.
• Your school may wish to place an article in the newsletter about Teacher’s Day which may prompt students to have a small luncheon or class party.
• Perhaps homework could be to write a few lines about an inspiring teacher or school experience students have had.
• Why not have the children write in a Colorific Star Greeting Card to thank a teacher who has inspired them.  Remember there are often many specialist teachers, principals and deputy principals that students come into contact with throughout their school life – not just the classroom teacher.

Who couldn’t look at these little cute pegs and see some lovely people just waiting to be given clothes and a
personality….but there is more to them than just the ‘dolly’

1. Use education packs of Plasticine and break off lumps to use as display stands for your creations. Just make a nice ball that fits in the palm of your student’s hands, place on the table and flatten just a little, then place the legs of the dolly peg in firmly so your creation can stand up.
2. Brilliant bug bodies! Just make some wings out of Honeycomb Mesh, use tinsel stems for legs and antennae – make a whole tribe of them!
3. Rather than the usual thin felt bodies – how about using paper mache or plaster bandage to give the body some substance – a big fat belly perhaps? You can then paint or colour the plaster when dry.
4. They make great animals – use a stem to wrap around the ‘head’ section of 2 pegs (the dolly’s legs become 4) or 4 pegs to bind them together. Add a final peg to the top with glue or use another stem to secure it to the peg legs – this will form your head and neck. Then decorate and name your creation.
5. How about as a pin free badge? Simply decorate with glitter, feathers, sequins etc and slide over the edge of a jumper or shirt for visual enhancement.
6. How about as a fun game where students pass a card to each other using only the dolly peg to do it.
7. Another fun game is where you place the pegs in various places on students clothes and students have to pull the pegs off each other, it’s quite fun with everybody running around trying to grab pegs off each other! You could make different coloured pegs worth different points – or make the game only collect yellow or red for example.
8. The dolly’s ‘legs’ make a great bird beak – now what can you use for a body? Stems and felt or foam? Brain Noodles would be perfect!
9. What about as a note holder? Turn upside down, secure the ‘head’ in some clay, or glue to wood or maybe even a popstick structure – be creative! Then paint and voilà! Secure a whole line of them for a mini filing system – maybe a bill paying schedule or homework organizer?
10. Finally – how about a dolly peg classroom absentee board? Each student makes a dolly peg representation of themselves. As each student arrives for the day they take their dolly peg and place it on the name board (which can be just a sheet of thick cardboard so that students can sit the pegs along the top). Instead of using the dolly peg head (which often makes them look like they have no neck!) how about gluing a polystyrene ball, say 25mm to the top for the head.

Imagine it is the start of the 2010 school year and you are writing a letter to yourself. What would you say about the last few months of the year 2009? What would you like to have achieved in 4th term? Congratulate yourself for having achieved some things you are looking forward to. Are you going on a school camp…write the letter as if you had been and include the fun things you would have done.

Reminisce about your Christmas holidays in your letter to yourself – make it as unreal and silly as you like! Don’t forget to wish yourself well for the year ahead!

Use the Colorific Time Capsule Kit and for all grades except grade 6 – keep the letters to return to students at the start of the next year in their new grade. They will have a great laugh!

Colorific Popstix are available in plain or multi colours – naturally our preference is for the colours – because it doesn’t matter really what you are making, learning to let go of conventional colouring is a great bonus when you
only have vibrant colours to choose from!

There are the obvious activities of picture frames and flags, so here are a few more popsticks suggestions to get you
inspired…

They make great bodies – think laterally and look around for embellishments – here is a list of bodied creatures you can make:

• Butterfly – use tissue or tinsel for wings and stems for legs and antennas.
• Dragon fly (as above)
• Snake – glue several end to end at jaunty angles and decorate.
• Caterpillar – use stems wrapped around for lots of legs and sandwich another popstick on top.
• People – 2 popsticks side by side for the body, 1 for each leg and half for each arm. Head can be anything – paper, pom pom etc.
• People – popsticks for body and head (draw on face, hair & clothes), stems for arms and legs.
• Giraffe – how good is one of those popsticks as a neck! You can use a Polystyrene Bell as a body and stems or half popstix for legs (they push into the foam nicely). Paint and embellish.
• Bird – cover in feathers and use stems for legs.

1. Bookmarks – either glue some tiny moving eyes on them, decorate and leave it as it is. An alternative is to
   use 2 popsticks and secure with an elastic band around the top to keep them firmly together. You place the
   popsticks over the page – one in front and one behind – that you wish to mark. Use feathers, bright
   cellophane or wool to decorate the top part that sticks out of the book.
2. Great decoration idea to create stars with 10 popsticks glued at each corner to create a 5 pointed star. Now
   paint, decorate and embellish! Colorific Glitter Stars are great for this, also think about wrapping
   the stars with Tinsel Stems in jaunty ways and gluing a Pom Pom randomly on the ends
   of the stems.
3. Note holder (can be a bit trickier and messier!), uses 10 popsticks. Place 3 popsticks side by side and glue
   together. Repeat with another 3 and again with just 2. Cut 2 popsticks in half and glue 2 together as with the
   sides above. Now place the 2 full popsticks on the bottom for the base – each of the sets of 3 are the sides
   and need to be glued to the base ~ you should have a U shape. The halves are for the sides – glue in
   place, allow to dry and decorate. You can make this as large as you like. TIP: you could use a cardboard
   box as a base and glue the popsticks on that structure – easier for younger children.
4. A bridge….set a challenge for the class, loads of popsticks, glue, tape and blutack. Set them off in groups to
   create a bridge structure capable of supporting an item of your choice. Great fun!
5. Magic wand ~ don’t laugh! Rather than the traditional Harry Potter version make this a wand of positivity!
   Whenever students are feeling negative or having difficulty, have them get out their wand and tell them
   they are not allowed to have a negative thought whilst they hold their wand, show them how they can turn
   their thinking around by choosing a different thought. The wand is simply a physical symbol of how to do
   this. Make them brightly coloured and embellished gorgeously to inspire fun and happy thoughts.

Popsticks can be used to cover almost anything, they can be glued, cut, drawn on, painted, they are environmentally
friendly and make great stabilizers for other projects.

Enjoy, and keep your popstix well stocked.

This would make a great Christmas gift for a grandparent! A fantastic A3 sized poster with a bubbly tree drawn on it and the word ‘me’ in the centre. Maple leaf shapes with name and relation printed on them form the leaves.

The simple beauty of this product is that you can make it as complex or simple as your students can cope with.  Younger students may only be able to include their immediate family and grandparents, older children can really fill the tree.

If you want you can include pictures, or drawings. Rather than using the template leaves, you could used different leaves for each ‘branch’ of the family, or trace the shape onto coloured paper for each ‘branch’ or layer of the family.

For even more fun and creative writing how about getting students to make up an alien family tree, or wizard family tree, or one for their pet…then you can create stories around the different characters they have created.

The fuller the tree the more spectacular it becomes. Decorate the trunk and tree with glitter, rhinestones or sequins to make it really spectacular – you could even add a few birds in amongst the branches for fun.

Are you a BFF?

What does it take to be a good friend? Close your eyes, breathe deeply for the count of 3 in and the count of 3 out, 3 times (talk students through this, ie: “in – 2 – 3 and out – 2 – 3”). Now when I say the words “I’m a great friend” and ask students what images they see?

Are they brightly coloured, is there sound, do you see your friends from school? Maybe friends from outside school. What are you doing together? Do you just see shapes and patterns? Do you think of cartoons, or a book you have read?

Use the fantastic Colorific supersized Cut-Outs Kids – these are 40.5cm long and have plenty of space to draw a visual or write a poem or creative script of some sort about being a good friend. Perhaps you could have a few story sparker lines for them to expand into a friendship story, maybe about a falling out and how it was resolved.

Create a few random cards that students have to pick out of a hat to start their story with.

Talk about the importance of friends in our lives. What can we all do to be a good friend? Have students discuss
the important qualities of listening, not judging, and offering support to a friend in need.

Students who are willing may like to share gratitude stories about their friends and a time when their friends were
there to support them when they needed it.