First 12 Posts of 2012 Linky Party

Here's a fun linky party that Lorraine over at Fabulous 4th Grade Froggies has come up with! Take a look back to the beginning of 2012 and list your first 12 posts of the year.  After you create your post, add your link to Lorraine's post, then go visit the other links and leave comments!

1. Ironically, my first post for 2012 was a linky party!
Top 3 Posts for 2011 Linky

2. Spin, Roll, Slide

3. Flattening the Classroom Walls Through Skype

4. Our First Skype Session and What We Learned

5. Pristine Classroom vs. Environment for Independent Learning

6. Learning About Mardi Gras Via Skype

7. I Hereby Grant You Permission to Pin

8. Pros and Cons of Social Media in Education

9. Patterns, Patterns, Patterns!

10. Inspired by Eric Carle

11. Guest Blogger Kendal: Skype!

12. Blogging: How to Write an Amazing Comment

Sponge-Painted Poinsettias

Make these gorgeous poinsettia sponge paintings!

I have a wonderful friend, Brenda, who comes to my class occasionally to do art with my students. We don't have art at the elementary schools in our district and it is hard to work it in. Having a friend plan and teach these projects allows my students to experience art without adding more to my already overflowing plate! Thanks Brenda!

For Christmas we made these sponge-painted poinsettias. The idea came from Deep Space Sparkle. This is a great place to find all kinds of art projects! Brenda made a PowerPoint so the students could see all of the steps from start to finish.  It was a lot of fun and the paintings turned out fabulous!

Cut foam sponges into the shape of the flower petal.

Make 3 flowers in a diagonal across the page. 

Add dark green leaves using a smaller sponge cut in the same petal shape. Using a Q-tip, add yellow dots to the center of the flowers.

Paint the white areas with a glittery wash made by watering down lavender  paint and adding glitter.

Tasty Geometry

Learning about sides, vertices, edges, and faces is so much fun when we use marshmallows! We started by building 2-dimensional figures like triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, and octagons. From there, we built prisms and pyramids by adding more marshmallows and toothpicks. This is a great hands-on activity that allows the students to explore and compare the attributes of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes. Students will have to "visualize" the faces and they will also discover that they are unable to make a rectangle or rectangular prism because the toothpicks are all the same size. Small straws or stir sticks could be used to make these shapes. 

Let's Celebrate a Few Blogiversaries!

Brian over at Hopkins' Hoppin' Happenings is celebrating one year of blogging by giving away one of his best selling items. Hurry on over and get the download!

Cynthia over at 2nd Grade Pad is giving away her whole TPT store!  Hurry and enter to win some really great products!