A Wreath for My Door

One of my goals this year is to have my students take more ownership of the room.  One way to do that is to make sure THEIR work is featured, instead of mine.  So when I saw Greg Smedley's wreath idea, I decided to have my students help me make a wreath for our classroom door.

Here is the result:

I laminated the final result so it is shiny and a bit hard to photograph.  Sorry!

Here is a closeup ...

My kinders are the green hands and my first graders are the blue hands.  I wanted to color code it to show how we complement each other.  I used the large ink pads from Lakeshore because the ink is washable and so much easier to use than paint.  BUT I love the bright colors that are in Greg's wreath.  So ... next year I may brave the paint.  Not sure yet.  Since this was my first time creating a wreath like this, I was a bit controlling (sigh ... I am trying not to be, really I am!).

These were my steps:

1) Have each student make a handprint on white contruction paper.  (I did this on the first day when they were also making handprints for their Kissing Hand puzzle.  Very time efficient to make two handprints at once!)  I lightly wrote their name in pencil on the papers ahead of time so that I could make sure each child made a handprint.  (You know how confusing that first day is!)

2)  I cut out each hand and wrote each name with a Sharpie.

3)  I arranged and rearranged the hands on a large sheet of blue posterboard.

4)  I glued the hands down and then cut out the posterboard in an appealing shape.  (Maybe only appealing to me!!!)

5) I laminated and then recut the wreath.

Yep ... lots of teacher steps!  I WILL GIVE UP CONTROL!  I WILL GIVE UP CONTROL!  I WILL GIVE UP CONTROL! (But I have to check my schedule and decide when that will be!)

Love to all,

Camille