Sometimes Learning's MESSY!

We have been reading a lot of Thanksgiving stories this month.  This morning, our sign-in asked students to pick one of three books and they picked this one:  

Our reading focus has been on characters and setting so we took the characters from the story and created our own little mini-play.  I WISH I had thought to take pictures of the students creating the Mayflower out of materials in our classroom!  They are just so clever!  

After we acted the story out, we reviewed the characters and the setting and each student created a scene from their favorite part of the book.  The only parameters were--they had to have the title, the characters and the setting in their picture.  I put the art materials out and let them " have at it"!  And that's exactly what they did!  Check out some of their work:  

 And here's the messy part:

 But look at this:

 And this Indian Corn BLEW ME AWAY!

 Speaking of Indian Corn...we're making another project that will be fun as we've learned about the Native Americans and how they helped the Pilgrims with their corn crop.  We are using the bottom of paint brushes to make our paper.  We also found out that wooden buttons worked.

 This is how it comes out:

You'll have to wait to see the real finished product NEXT week!

 And here's another nifty little project we finished this week.  We made a turkey for our turkey poems.  I am amazed at how each turkey gets its own characteristics based on the artist.  Check them out:

Yes, sometimes learning's messy...but, in my opinion, that's one of the things that makes it FUN!