Is it just me, or are classroom Father’s Day gifts WAY harder to come up with than Mother’s Day ones?? Especially en français – all those cute puns in English just don’t translate. Luckily, I have a couple ideas up my sleeve this year!
First, I saw the most adorable Tic-tac-toe game on Pinterest that uses the letters P and A instead of X and O, to spell “papa”. Here is the picture that sparked the idea :
It comes from this blog, but I can’t find the actual post where they make them! So, here is hoping that my salt dough and cardboard plan works! I use salt dough all throughout the year in my classroom, and that is what we are going to use to make our letters. I get my recipe from That Artist Woman’s blog (an incredible blog full of art ideas for all grades!), and I always make it with my students in our classroom. A great way to throw in some science and have a discussion about how the appearance and texture of each ingredient changes when you mix them all together! There is an oven in our school that any teacher can use, so I will pop them into the oven the morning after we make them, and we will paint them the following day. When we made our dinosaur bones with the salt dough, I let them air dry, and it actually worked pretty well – but it took about a week to fully dry. Fathers Day is fast approaching and we have a busy week next week, so time is of the essence and we will definitely be baking these! For the game board, I have a bunch of boxes from Scholastic orders, and I plan to cut the cardboard into squares. My students will sponge paint them, and we will add the lines with some of the millions of rolls of Washi tape I bought last summer (I may or may not have a slight Washi tape addiction…).
We have already started Part 2 of our gifts. Instead of just making a card this year, I decided it would be cute to make our fathers a little book! I always get a kick out of what kids draw and write when you ask them to describe why they love their fathers, their favorite things to do with them, etc. So, I put together a little 10 page booklet for my students to work on throughout this week and next. It includes prompts like “Voici ce que j’aime faire avec mon papa”, “Mon papa est comme un Super-héros parce que…”, “5 raisons pourquoi j’aime mon papa”, etc. I love this time of year when almost all of them are able to read prompts on their own – and are willing to help the few who aren’t quite there yet! I have a lot of evaluations to do for report cards, so this has been a nice way to keep them occupied yet productive. I printed out and assembled the booklets before passing them out to my students and let them work at their own pace. The grade one teacher at my school is doing the same activity, and she gave them one page at a time to work on. You can do all the prompts, or just a couple. Whatever works best for your kiddos! Here are a few photos of what they have accomplished so far :
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| “J’aime jouer sur l’ordinateur avec mon papa!” (my little primary who wrote that 100% by himself is definitely one of the smartest 6 year olds I have ever taught!) “J’aime jouer au hockey avec papa” “C’est le spaghetti” (le repas préféré du papa) |
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| “Mon papa est super parce que tu m’amène à la plage” “Je joue à cache-cache avec papa” “J’aime jouer à deux ballons” “J’aime jouer tigre balançoire (?!) avec papa” |
The book is available for purchase on Teachers Pay Teachers. Also included in the download is a book for Grand-papa and a book with a blank space where a child who may not have a father figure currently in their life can write a name of their choice! You can check it out in my store by clicking either of the following pictures.
PS – I am currently sitting at 99 Followers on TpT!! Once I hit 100, I may just have to throw a little sale, so stay tuned!!! :)
