Pencil Grab Challenge

I'm cleaning off my iPad and wanted to share what we do in Minnesota when the kids can't go outside for weeks at a time because of the cold weather... We do Minute to Win It challenges.  This one I did with the 6th grade lunch.  Each day I would bring down a bunch of pencils and let kids try the challenge with two pencils.  If they got it, they try three the next day.  This is the last day when we brought it down from about 350 kids to about 20.  What fun this was.

Building Community, Building Catapults

What a fun homeroom challenge!  Homeroom is cross grade groups (6th, 7th, and 8th grade) so sometimes it is hard to do activities that engage all students.  This was a winner!  We gave the kids the materials but didn't give them instructions.  They had to build a catapult and get a piece of paper in the trash.  Got this great idea from Kids Activity Blog.

I'm going to miss you!

 

So long my 2012/13 homeroom!  We had a great year and some yummy pancakes too!

Truly going to miss my 8th graders this year.

Find more image our last day on my Flickr

Recycle: Spinning CD

My son brought home this really cool CD spinner from his after school care.  It was so easy to do and very fun as well, that I had do to do it with my home room.  We had a little Top Tournament.  I made a bracket and all.  It was FUN!!!  The kids had a blast.  Here's how we made it.

• Decorate your CD's

• Glue a pop cap on the top of the CD.

• Then glue a Marble on the bottom of the CD

We did a bracketed tournament for our CD Spinners.  Middle school students loved them, and really loved the composition.

I have also seen this project done on Spoonful.

Amazing Artwork from ISD 728

Let me just brag again about the art teachers of our district.  We do a great job K-12.  It makes me proud to send my kids to Elk River and happy to have such a comprehensive art program.  The sad news is we will not have specialist for our Kindergarten kids next year.  Our district has gone to free all day kindergarten for all students.  In doing that, we will reduce their day to a 5.5 hour day and cut specialist.  This will bring a lot of changes to what our program might look like next year, there most certainly will be movement amongst staff.  More importantly I'm disappointed as a parent because my Mini Matisse will be a Kindergartener next year.  Well... enough of that... Be sure to check out the WONDERFUL artwork of our district.

Hearts for June

Our homerooms were asked to make Hearts For June.  June is a little girl who spends a lot of time in the hospital due to her medical conditions.  Her Mom has made a goal of getting 20,000 'Hearts for June', by June 1st.  We made tin fiol wrapped hearts.  Be creative and send little June some love too!

Hearts for June, Click here to see here story...

If you would like to send a heart to June here is what to do. Make it 4 by 4 inches on any kind of paper and decorate it as you wish. Make sure to sign it and say where you are from. Send the hearts to June Rudd, P.O. Box 992, Anoka, MN 55303.

1:  We cut a heart out of heavy weight paper and place 6 or so notches along he sides of the heart.

2:  Place some yarn in one of the notches.

3: Brin it across the heart to another notch.

4: Repeat this 3 times.

5:  Do this to all the notches.

6:  Wrap tin foil around the heart. 

back

front

7: Finish by coloring the heart with sharpie markers.

The Rock Story continues...

The rocks are still moving around the world.  They have gone all over the US and some even ventured out of the states a bit.  Here is a recent picture sent to me by our Assistant Principal Bruce Jean and several of our staff members.  This little rock can't wait to be found!  

Alison in Michigan found a rock.  She continued the story and it has been posted along with other stories on the Rock Thought website.  Be sure to keep looking to see if your rock has been found!

Artist Rock Thoughts

Ch. Stückelberger has left a new comment on your post "Step 7- Hiding the rocks.": 

I like that Warhol rock. I'd like to see more of them. (I've got a rock project going with a class as well.) 


You ask and I will answer!

With my art class I had the kids do a little twist on the Monster rocks for their Rock Thoughts.  Here we have a series of rocks I called 'Artist Rocks'.  I asked the kids to decorate a rock as an artist, or in an artist style.  As you can see we have great artist such as...

Keith Haring...

Pablo Picasso... 

Andy Warhol...

Georgia O'Keefe...

I asked the students to go through the same process as the rest of the school.  The advantage was they know the process of rock thoughts.  I found doing this a second time with them was really beneficial.  I also gave more specifics on the story.  I asked them to include 5 facts about their artist or style.  Most students understood my request.  Some didn't but still had a wonderful story.  If you want to see the whole series of these rocks, click here for my flickr site.

When these rocks were done I sent them all over the world with my staff.  Most teachers do a big trip in the summer and I sent a rock with many of them.  Keep your eye out for a rock in your neck of the woods.

Check out the stories as well (click here for Rock Thoughts).  I was REALLY impressed with these.   Here is just one example of a story of the rock above by Andrew, grade 8.  It was copied from the RockThoughts website...

It was a bright sunny day, but Pablo Pic-ROCK-so was inside, painting, as it is his favorite thing to do. Pablo had created many things, which he hung up on his wall, and he loved to paint in an angular fashion. Many people teased Pablo, his paintings were not like every other rock’s, they were different. Pablo didn’t mind the teasing though, as long as he could still paint. He rolled over by the window to see out side, right in between two of him paintings, the first was called Guernica and the second was named Les Demoiselles D’ Avigirnon.

Pablo really liked those paintings he thought he did really well on them but some of the other rocks didn’t like them because those paintings, like Pablo were different. He turned to look at two of his other paintings that he had worked really had on. One, named Gertrude Stein, was hung over his Rock-couch. The other, the one he called The Two Saltimbangques, was hung on his Rock-Fridge, where he kept his Rock-Food. All of the sudden, Pablo heard a knock on the door. He was pretty surprised because for one, none of the other rocks ever wanted to play with Pablo and two, rocks don’t have arms to knock with. He slowly rolled over to answer the door to meet a slim, round, smooth, Rock-Girl.

“I couldn’t help but notice that when I was looking through you window I saw some magnificent paintings, did you paint them yourself?” asked the odd Rock-girl. “Well actually I did, but no one else seems to appreciate them like you…” replied Pablo with a blush. “Well I think they are great and I also think we should hang out some time, would you like to do something on Friday?” said Rock-girl. “That would be great!” exclaimed Pablo, who was excited to have finally met a new friend.

Step 7- Hiding the rocks.

RockThoughts suggest that you hide the rocks someplace in public for other to find and add to the story.  After speaking with the Rock Thought Staff, I decided to start these rocks out a bit differently.

I emailed the staff at the three elementary schools that feed into our middle school.  I had staff from each school participate and they all worked on the project differently.  I provided a worksheet for the elementary student to help them participate.  This also helped teachers know when they needed the lab for looking up the rocks and typing the stories.  Click here to see the worksheet.


Otsego Elementary:

I asked student to meet me at the school at 4:30.  We had plans to hide the rocks in the front garden of the school.  I thought this would be safe because there was not lawn mowers to catch a rock here.  Mrs. Matchinsky was kind enough to give this project a try.  After finding the rocks, she asked her students to go home and write the stories with their parents.  I loved this idea.  Anything to facilitate parent interaction!



Hassan Elementary:

You can't really tell by this picture, but it was going to rain soon and a hard rain at that... These kiddo's helped me hide the rocks in the media center of the school.  This was really nice for the teachers to find the rock amongst the books of the library.  Mrs. Wallin and Ms. Silva of Hassan Elementary both participated.  Their classes found the rocks and re-hid the rocks for the other group. When finished, the rocks were taken and placed all over the community by the last class who worked on them.

And my dear Rogers Elementary:

Many of you might remember that RES was my home for the past seven years so the teachers there are friends.  All the 4th and 5th grade participated, several of the kindergarten classes helped, and Mrs. Wilhem (the new art teacher) all worked on rocks.  What a great treat to do a project with these ladies again.  The rocks were found and hid several times thought out the last couple of weeks of school.  They reported that the kids started steeling the rocks at night when they would come to the school for sports.  I never advocate steeling but it made me smile a bit because the rocks were just that popular.  Again, the last classes to write the stories got to take the rocks home and hide them someplace in the community.

Finally, I did a special group of rocks with my art class.  These rocks will be heading out with my coworkers from RMS.  I am asking teachers who are traveling this summer to take a rock and hopefully get a picture of the rock where they hide it, and send the pictures back our way.  I know we have teachers going to New York, Washington, China, and more...

Who knows, maybe one of you will find a RMS rock:)

Step 6- Writing the story

Now to have the kids write the story.  As of step 2, there has already been assigned jobs for the students.  This is where the writers SHINE!  I provided this worksheet not really knowing how it would help.  I just thought for some kids it would have them think of the direction of their story.  Some kids used it and were able to really run with their story.  Some stories were very forced... I guess that's going to happen with you are working with such a vass group of people.  I think if I were to do this again, I would have an english teacher do a bit of a story lesson for the kids on the morning show. I would have liked to see deeper thought of the rocks stories over all.  If you would like to look at this worksheet, click here...

Once stories have been created they are submitted on the RockThought websites.  They have a google doc set up at this time.  It works slick.  All submissions are viewed before posting so there is a bit of a delay.  

Step 5- Taking Pictures

When I printed off the labels for the URL and Rock Code for the bottom of the rocks, I also printed off labels for pictures.  Here you see that I have taped a white paper on the wall and I have a curve to the sheet anchored onto a table.  I place the rock on the paper and have a back drop if I need to take a picture strait on or from the top.  I place the code on the paper or bend it a bit to make it stand.  The sheet with the labels on it helps me to know what rocks I'm missing.  I would imagine that you could use a white board, name tents, or have the kids make a sign as well as their rock.  This was just the way I did it.

Once you have all the pictures, you need to send them to the RockThought staff.  Emailing is fine but with a mass group of images like this project was, a Flickr or Picassa folder was helpful.  Click here to see mine.

Step 4- Collecting the rocks

Rocks are out... Now how to get them back.  I had a counter top cleared off with numbers ranging from 1 to 150 (the amount of rocks that I was collecting).  After repeating my due date to staff several time, and placing it on the announcements, I received about 1/3 of the rocks on the first day.  I expected this.  When doing a large activity like this I always allow 'late' time.  The next day I had a few more.  I put out my hard due date to staff and received MOST of them by my 'true' anticipated time.  As the rocks were trickling in, it was nice to have a designated space for the rocks to go.  I would highly recommend coming up with a plan for collecting the rocks when doing this project with a large group.  

Step 3- Rock Thoughts- Explanation

I had my advisory students help me out with a quick little video to show on our morning show.  This gave full instructions of what the kids were to do the first couple of week.  I found this to be a GREAT tool to explain things to a mass audience.



My original post said the following and this video was also distributed to my staff incase they wanted/needed to watch it again.


RMS is involved with a GREAT project called Rock Thoughts.  There will be much to share with you in the near future.  This post is for the 51 other advisory classes to watch and understand what this project is all about.

Step 2: Rock Thoughts- Groups

Once the rocks are in the homeroom, it was time for the students to start working in teams.  Each Homeroom got three rocks, each rock had a team of Artist, Writers and Directors.  I provided a worksheet to help explain the different roles to the teachers.  (Click here to see the whole worksheet)

I also provided a second worksheet to help homerooms sign their classes up into groups.  (click here to see that)

The groups worked well.  The students had a couple of weeks to complete their rocks in these groups.

Step 1: Rock Thoughts- Preparation and Distributing the Rocks

What is Rock thoughts?  How did I get involved?  Please see my previous post...

Step 1:  First thing I needed for the rock project was ROCKS!  I contacted our local gavel pit.  Hassan Sand and Gravel was happy to donate plenty of rocks for our project.

I thought the rocks would be best if they had a base color.  I used house paint to paint the rocks.  It worked well.

I used a Google Doc Spreadsheet to lay out all make a mail merge for mailing labels.  This worked slick!  I made two labels at this time, one for on the bottom of the rocks and one for the pictures of the rocks later.

Then I grouped the rocks into three.  Each homeroom (51 of them) got a little care package of rocks.  The rocks were 3 consecutive numbers.  I also marked what homeroom received what rocks.  This was helpful during turn in time.

That about wraps up the preparation and  distributing of the rocks.  More to follow.