Blog Archive

7/1/16

Summer's Here! How about a little classroom project?

Whew! It's finally here!
SUMMERRRRRRRRR - yay!

As an educator, I've been out of school for a couple of weeks now, so what better time to showcase one of my favorite projects from this year? I was so excited for this one, and I've received many compliments on the idea and the project, so I thought I'd put it out there.

So, there's been this dresser in the classroom that is just sort of... blech. I never took a picture of the thing, it wasn't really picture-worthy. [insert picture of out-dated dresser here]
Don't get me wrong, someone obviously took some time to decorate the thing - it was off-white with green sponge painting all over - but it just looked like it had been there a while, and it was sort of tired and wheezy :/

So I took the poor thing home, intending on just whiting the whole thing out and starting fresh. Well, that took a slight detour - how could I resist throwing in some school colors?
(Don't mind my little stalker there in the foreground :) )

'Just white' wasn't cutting it for me, so the base, front (behind the drawers) and the top got a grey, distressed sort of finish. As you can see, the wooden drawer pulls received some blue and yellow Panther flair :)

So, after transporting it back to school, I taped off rectangles on the drawer fronts and sides. This, of course, evoked some questions from the kids (kids asking questions? No way!) 
What better time to tell them - they get to draw on it. 
WHAT?! All of their faces looked confused but intrigued. 
That's right - they got to draw on it.
After some discussion about the theme (their favorite 'thing' at school), and the grave importance of using sharpies carefully, I let them draw out their idea. Once they had it all fleshed out, I let them have at a square on the dresser.







The level of concentration would make any parent or teacher proud! 

With only a couple of tears shed, the project was a success!



Not every square was filled in, but that's OK - more room for next year :)

I hope you enjoyed our little project!


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