Imagination news: An alternative to morning news

In a typical junior primary classroom many mornings start off with morning news or sharing time which is a wonderful tradition that allows children to share their stories and helps to build their communication skills. Yet in some classes I have experienced that some children don't always have something to share and can be bored by this ritual. I want to share something small with you that I learnt from a lovely new entrants class I taught in that could help rejuvenate this morning routine. That something is imagination news.

Santa Craft Activity

I relieved in a wonderful new entrant class today. The classroom teacher left a great Christmas art activity that I wanted to share with you.

Each student was given a template of Santa's face. The children coloured him in and then cut him out. I then gave the children thin strips of white photocopy paper that the children had to roll around their pencils to curl. They also had pom poms to glue onto the end of Santa's hat. A very simple activity to take but the children loved it and did an amazing job of their Santa. I was very impressed with how well these students did at curling their Santa's beard as this is quite tricky. Good for practising fine motor skills!

This image is an example of what the template looked like (click on the image to go to the site) and the second image shows what the beard looks like when it's finished. I bet these will look great on the wall!

This was done with a second class and unfortunately we didn't have any pom poms but they still look great!