Make a cute end-of-the year bulletin board with summery flowers that will have your students using all sorts of skills and reinforcing lots of report card standards. Here's how:
Look How I've Blossomed & Grown!
I weigh and measure my Y5's at the beginning and end of the year, so I can do all sorts of math extensions of how much they've grown. This information used to be on their report cards.
They subtract their beginning and ending height and weight, we add everyone's height and weight for grand totals, we graph who was the tallest and weighed the most, and we compare these to last year's totals.
Children go on a hunt to see if they can find things in the room that are as tall as they are, and we guess-timate a list of things that might weigh as much as they do.
If you have weighed and measured your students too, you can include it on their flower, if not simply have them write how else they have grown. Discuss with your students what it means to "blossom".
Brainstorm with them ways they have grown since the beginning of the year. For example, they have not just grown physically, but they are smarter. What new things can they do now? Jot these down on the white board.
This could also be a Venn Diagram of how they are the same and how they are different since the beginning of the year as well.
Run off the petal master on red, orange, yellow, pink, blue, and purple construction paper if you're using white paper plates, and on white construction or copy paper if you're using colored paper plates.
You can have students cut these out, or have some of them pre-cut for younger children.
To add some color to white petals, students can write with a colored marker, or draw some colored lines on the petals. (See photo.)
Each student will need 8 petals, 1 stem, and 1 leaf. (If you want the leaves 3-dimensional then they need 2.)
Have students cut out the petals and write something on each one. If you've kept track of their height and weight, students can incorporate this information on their petals.
The ruler master should be run off on lime or light green construction paper so that you can read the numbers. I like to run off the leaves on an emerald green paper so that there is a contrast.
If you want your bulletin board to be 3-dimensional, have students glue their petals to the front of an 8" paper plate.
Write student's name under their photo, along with the date they started and ended school. I also write the grade they were in above their picture. (See photo.)
Flip the plate over, the flower will then look rounded and the bulletin board will "pop" out at you. If you are using sturdier, colored paper plates, leave them face up, as they are deeper and the edges pop up.
Glue the leaves to the back of the ruler- stem. You can make the leaves 3-D as well by gluing 2 together and folding one half up.
Glue the leaves to the back of the stem and the stem to the back of the plate. Make sure that when they cut out their stem-ruler, they leave some blank space at the top so they can glue it to the plate and not cover their numbers.
You can leave the center of the flower white or you can add colored construction paper circles.
To make the flowers even cuter and more of a keepsake, enlarge your students' school pictures on the copier and have them glue the photo to the center of their flower.
Cover the bulletin board with blue paper. Snip green construction paper and use this as a grass border on the bottom. Add a yellow circle for the sun in one corner.
If you want to make it more 3-D, twist some yellow crepe paper and staple on some strands as rays.
Add your students' flowers to the grass and you're set. Caption: Look how ____________'s Preschool / Kindergarten / 1st grade students have blossomed and grown this year!
Click on the link to view/print the flower bulletin board patterns.
