Motivational Monday: September 12 and Anyone Can Be an Artist!

Happy Tuesday! For a little bit longer anyway. It's a good thing we don't need a whole lot of sleep anymore.
So, as it was for most of you, yesterday was a rough day for us. We remembered back to where we were on September 11th, and mourned for our country all over again. But then today, we woke up, and everything was still ok. It's much like what kids went through ten years ago. Only a handful of our students knew much about September 11th, and of course they are too young to really comprehend it. So today in class we talked about what happened in first grade terms. Then we read this WONDERFUL book written by a class of first graders after September 11th.

Not only is this a great tool to use to talk about what happened with our kids, but it's also a great example to show our first graders kids really are authors. So we read this book, and really talked about who the true heroes of the day were. We talked about fireman, policeman, and all of the rescue workers who gave their lives to help save others. So we decided that this would be a good time to thank our own community fire fighters who help keep us safe everyday. The kids were of course more able to relate to this, than anything else. So we used this template to write thank you notes to our firemen, which we will put in the mail tomorrow.

Get your copy of our Fireman Thank You HERE.

How precious are these?


Now for some motivation for all ya'll! We fell in LOVE with these posters from First Grade Parade and The Inspired Apple. But, like many of you I'm sure, we have no amazing drawing talent. We are both quite crafty, and can definitely hold our own in that department, but darn it, we just can't draw. But those posters are absolutely to die for! We loved the why writers write, and what they can write about. We also really fell in love with Cara's Peacemakers and Peacebreakers activity, and just had to incorporate those into our rooms. But again, can't draw worth beans. So, here's what we did!


We just got out our trusty MacBooks, and went to work. We were quite happy with how cute our posters turned out! So you see, even if you don't have great artistic talent, we do have computers and clipart! It's {almost} just as good! We figure that we spend enough time in our classrooms, we'd like to like the way our anchor charts look. And the kids really had a great time helping us out! We first did our rough draft with our students, printed everything out, and then came back together to make our final drafts to hang up. What a fun lesson!

Update: You asked, and we answered! Our clipart and words are now on TpT so you can make your own charts. Check it out HERE!


Now for these posters, we not only had to print out the words, but had to figure out the pictures of David. So we just printed out a cover of the book covers, and then cut them out. To make the final drafts for these posters, we did a sorting activity of all of the different behaviors. We figured out which they belonged with, Peacemakers or Peacebreakers. The we wrapped our discussion with talking about who we want to be.
If you'd like a copy of these words, grab it HERE.
And thanks a bunch to Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten for her idea on Peacemakers and Peacebrakers. Hope this motivates you to make your own cute posters! And really Cara and Abby, if you'd like to come to our classes and make our anchor charts for us, we'd love it!!! :)
Have a great week!

16 comments:

  1. Love the words for the Peacemakers. Thanks :)

    Jodi
    fun-in-first.blogspot.com

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  2. Love it! I can't draw worth beans either!

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  3. OMGoodness I never thought of using clip art! So much easier! thanks :)

    http://firstgradewizards.blogspot.com

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  4. What you be willing to post the clipart or even put it on tpt for the why we write?

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  5. Miss Atwell, we'll get it up tonight, along with our posters for "What we can write about." Hope that works for ya! It really does make a difference! :)

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  6. Thank you! I am NOT artistic at all... so I LOVE your posters! I'm going to print mine out tonight and finally do this activity later this week. :)

    Janae
    The Sharpened Pencil

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  7. I can't draw either! Love the posters! Thank you for sharing your words for the Peacemakers and Peacebreakers activity.

    Amanda
    First Grade Garden

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  8. Our writing posters are up on TpT. Check them out here: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Writing-Anchor-Charts-Create-posters-for-your-classroom

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  9. Y'all are stinkin' DARLING!!! And those posters are absolutely PRECIOUS!!! So much easier to use clipart and they're ADORABLE!! Thanks for the firemen Thank You note printable...LOVE IT!!!

    Cara :)
    The First Grade Parade

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  10. I used your Peacemakers/Peacebreakers words as a Bucket Filler activity with my third graders this year and they loved it! Thanks for making it so easy and cute :) I have it featured on my blog post here. Thanks again!!!

    ~Stephanie
    3rd Grade Thoughts

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  11. These are SO ADORABLE!! I can't wait to use them! Can you tell me what font(s) you used? I was hoping to add an 'e' to Peacebr-e-akers :)
    Katie
    katie_rhoads@scps.k12.fl.us

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  12. I love this idea for the peacemakers/breakers. I'd also like it if you could fix the spelling on the poster so it would spell break rather than brake.

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  13. I am looking for the bucket filling activity words and phrases...

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