I will not let a small budget stand in the way of my students success. I have been planning a project that involves cereal boxes and toilet paper rolls. I sent a letter home last week and asked students to bring in one cereal box and one toilet paper/paper towel roll. I put a large box in each home room for students to collect these items. I took a peek in the homerooms on Thursday before I left for the week and I was disappointed by the number of boxes collected. I anticipate the project working best when each student works independently (I have been working slowly on sharing skills we are working toward a collaborative
project but we're not there yet). I have been a little worried trying to collect as many cereal boxes as I can. I even hijacked some of my friends boxes but I just wasn't getting enough.So I did what any art teacher would do. I looked up the recycling schedule and walked all around the area trash picking. HUGE SUCCESS!! I grabbed over 40 cereal boxes! and a number of assorted cracker boxes that could also work.
Now there is no excuse for my students to not be successful.
Added Bonus: I found a ton of box top for education! Not sure if my school participates but I will give them to a school that does.
My best source of recyclables, besides asking kids to bring in, is sending out "all staff emails". I can't begin to tell you how many bags of newspapers, toilet paper rolls, old CD's, cereal boxes, microwave dinner dishes (I use them for palettes) and more I've gotten this way. Sometimes the bigger challenge is to stop the flow. I find bags of goodies waiting for me outside my classroom my door on a regular basis.
ReplyDeleteBy the way - if you are having fun collecting cereal boxes, check out Michael Albert and "cerealism"here: http://www.cerealism.com/default.aspx?pageId=1
My students had great fun learning about and imitating his work. good luck!
One more thing - since you are a new blogger and today is the first time I've seen your blog - can you tell us what state you are in? (assuming you are in the US). Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHi Phyl! Thanks so much for the comment. I sent a email out to the staff. Unfortunately I don't have a large presence in the school yet. I'm only there in the afternoon and I don't have a lot of interaction with other staff. I'm hoping this changes once I get some of our art projects on display :)
ReplyDeleteI loved the link thank you. I wasn't aware of the artist. this is something I want to share with my students.
I am in Pennsylvania. Right now I'm teaching in two different schools in Philadelphia.
Me again - I did a Cerealist project with my kids after we learned about Dali and surrealism, so the segue into cerealism was totally fun and silly and the kids loved the joke! I posted about it here:
ReplyDeletehttp://plbrown.blogspot.com/2011/03/cerealism-no-thats-not-spelling-error.html