We enjoyed our first Friday Fun of the school year. Since we have been learning about our sense of sight, students made suncatchers. This was one of the neatest crafts I have seen in a long time. I purchased mini aluminum pie tins from Amazon. Students used their fine motor skills to place a row of mostly transluscent pony beads around the bottom of the tin.

After the designs were created (and the students went off to Spanish class) I took our small toaster oven and moved it outside, where I preheated it to 450 degrees. I popped two tins in at a time and let them cook for about eight minutes, or until the beads had melted. (The key is baking the plastic beads outside in fresh air to keep from smelling the fumes.)

Once they cooled, I turned over the tins to remove the suncatchers.

How beautiful! This weekend I plan to drill small holes into the tops and add a translucent thread so that these sun catchers can be hung in our classroom windows.

The next project had students decorating a mini chalkboard.

These chalkboards will be used during Reading Centers as a way for students to practice writing letters, spelling words, and recording answers for different phonemic awareness activities. We love Fridays!

 

Update:

Here’s what the suncatchers look like after the holes were drilled and the fishing line was strung:

Beautiful!