Monday 21 January 2013

Recycling Christmas cards - literacy and maths ideas

What do you do with all the cards once Christmas is over?  
Here are some ideas - you can take them as far as you want!
 
We took a selection of cards and started by going through them one by one, looking at them as though they were books and giving each a title. This produced lots of laughs, turning out to be great fun as well as thought provoking.

I then asked the children to chose a card that appealed to them and give it a title, list the characters and outline the story.  The next day the girls used their story planning to write the story in full.

 Jemima chose this card and wrote a story about some abandoned puppies.

Using a card like the one above, with younger children, you could chat about what is happening as a starting point and soon a story will emerge.

Name the puppies.
What are they looking at?

We also made jigsaw puzzles.
 The older girls and I looked at the Christmas cards and we discussed which cards would make easy and difficult puzzles. You can simply cut up a card into a number of pieces that your child can manage, or do what we did ...
 
 First, we cut the card into four pieces.

 Then into eight and so on, each time putting the jigsaw back together. We kept on halving the pieces until we could no longer put the puzzle back together.


Patterned jigsaws are more tricky to put back together than picture cards.

Reuben loved the jigsaw made from this card.

Can you think of a good title for the book with this cover?

7 comments:

  1. Just trawling through the blog ring and saying hello :) I love the 'story' idea with the card as a starting point, thank you for sharing :)

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  2. Great recycling idea! Thanks for posting at Math Monday! :)

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  3. Great idea! I'm pinning this so my homeschool co-op friends can see it. Found you on Wow Us Wednesday. Thanks for sharing!

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  4. This is a great idea for an activity. I really like the idea of starting with giving the card a title, then going to characters, and so on. My son loves storytelling, and he loves pretending things that aren't books are books, so he should enjoy this!

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  5. Great idea to make puzzles out of cards! We use them for crafts, but when I teach my daughter to do this she will love it! Thanks for sharing at Mom's Library.

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  6. I featured you today on Mom's Library! Thanks for sharing!

    http://chickenbabies.blogspot.com/2013/01/moms-library-link-up-10.html

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  7. What great ideas!! I love them!! Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!!

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