Truffula Trees - 5th Grade Production "Mystery of the Midnight Thief"

I haven't updated in a while - I apologize.  I had a post all ready to go and realized I don't have pictures of the project downloaded onto my computer yet!  Whoops!

Things have been busy with mid-winter break, snow days, and 5th grade production.  March is the craziest, busiest month EVER at our school.  Whew.  I will earn my Spring Break!

Well, with the 5th grade production almost on my doorstep I took some extra minutes today between classes to finish up the Truffula Trees for the Seuss scene in our show!

These turned out pretty great and are far steadier than I was expecting!

It's amazing what tomato cages, paper mache, water bottles, tissue paper and some square fencing can become!

Backside

3rd - Silouette Trees

 I do not remember how this project came to me - I think I was trying to do something else and a mistake turned into a pretty awesome project.

This is the project that 3rd grade did for their Original Works fundraiser project.

The students were given a piece of 8.5x11 piece of paper and a strip of masking tape - about arms length.  The students tore the masking tape with their fingers, making rough sides/edges.  As the students tore the tape they built their tree.  The thicker pieces for the trunk, small tears can be used for tiny branches - each piece can be added to the tree.

Some students chose to do a landscape, others portrait style - some students have one tree or many.

After the tape is used and the students like their composition - they color over the tape, filling the whole paper with oil pastel.  The students can make patterns, sunsets, random colors - anything they can think of - they must fill the whole paper with solid color.

Once the paper is filled with color, peal the tape off very carefully.  If the paper rips a little, it's okay - a bonus branch.  I demonstrate this for the students and show them how sometimes mistakes can turn out pretty awesome.

The end results are wonderful!  All students succeed and all projects look very different!