Star Templates for Your Classroom

        "Stars, either cut from cardboard and covered with gold or silver paper, or cut from construction paper, and attached to black thread, may be hung in the windows, used on the Christmas tree, or suspended over the sand table showing a Christmas scene."

• Older students can learn to wrap flat Japanese temari for the Christmas tree.
• Read about Froebel Stars and watch a video by Jo Nakashima
• I discovered Scandinavian Star Curl Ornaments at an estate sale...

Star templates in five sizes for the classroom.

On Christmas Day by Dickens

 

On Christmas Day
by Charles Dickens

       Welcome, everything! Welcome, alike what has been, and what never was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your places around the Christmas fire, where what is sits openhearted. In yonder shadow, do we see obtruding furtively upon the blaze an enemy's face? By Christmas Day we do forgive him! If the injury he has done us may admit of such companionship, let him come here and take his place. If otherwise, unhappily, let him go hence, assured that we will never injure nor accuse him!
       On this day, we shut out Nothing! Charles Dickens quote.

Thanksgiving by Anonymous

Thanksgiving

Praise God for wheat, so white and sweet,
Of which to make our bread!
Praise God for yellow corn, with which
His waiting world is fed!
Praise God for fish and flesh and fowl
He gave to men for food!
Praise God for every creature which
He made, and called it good!

Praise God for winter's store of ice!
Praise God for summer's heat!
Praise God for fruit trees, bearing seed;
"To you it is for meat!"
Praise God for all the bouncy
By which the world is fed!
Praise God ye children, all to whom
He gives your daily bread!

Drawing Skills Index

Samples of drawing exercises listed in the index below.

        

       Drawing, the art of representing upon a flat surface the forms of objects and their positions and relations to one another. Drawing is a mode of expression. It is as natural to the child as writing and is used by him long before he learns to write, and in many instances even before he learns to talk. Experienced teachers of drawing claim that were drawing taught with as much care and persistence as language in the primary grades of the public schools, the children would go from these grades as proficient in one mode of expression as in the other.

1. Practice Shading An Owl
2. Ed Emberley's Children's Books 
3. A Terrible, Horrible Cursive Exercise
4. Create Fall Leave Patterns
5. Draw a Scarecrow Emphasizing The Use of Pattern(s)
6. Draw a Shaded White Spider Web
7. Draw a Landscape Using Vincent Van Gogh's Drawing Technique
8. Draw Klimt Figures
9. Drawing Dragons
10. When History Becomes Legend: Catapults and Dragons
11. Draw Mardi Gras Performers
12. Learning to draw birds
13. Learning to draw by use of a grid system

Simple Drawing Exercises for Young Students:

1. Draw bees and clover for St. Patrick's Day
2. How to draw a furry fox
3. How to draw a peacock, an ostrich and a blue jay...
4. How to Draw a Pelican 
5. How to Draw A Cow
6. How to Draw the Head of A Horse
7. How to Draw a Halloween Cat
8. Steps to draw a woodchuck, a weasel, and an opossum... 
9. Draw Santa Step-by-Step 
   

Picture Writing:

• Hieroglyphics or Picture Writing

Drawing Games:

• Five Dots Drawing Game
• A fun drawing game for a crowd

Printable calendar pages for any year...

        Teachers will need to fill in the correct numerical dates for the specific days that will change every year. However, the grid and titles of the days of the week, plus months are already printable on the following calendar pages.

January calendar page.

February calendar page.

March calendar page.

April calendar page.

May calendar page.

June calendar page.

July calendar page.

August calendar page.

September calendar page.

October calendar page.

November calendar page.

December calendar page.

Wrens Learning to Sing

Wren mother teaches her young to sing.

       A wren built her nest in a box, so situated that a family had an opportunity of observing the mother bird instructing the young ones in the art of singing peculiar to the species. She fixed herself on one side of the opening in the box, directly before her young, and began by singing over her whole song very distinctly. One of the young then attempted to imitate her. After proceeding through a few notes, its voice broke, and it lost the tune. The mother immediately recommenced where the young one had failed, and went very distinctly through the remainder. The young bird made a second attempt, commencing where it had ceased before, and continuing the song as long as it was able; and when the note was again lost, the mother began anew where it stopped, and completed it. Then the young one resumed the tune and finished it. This done, the mother sang over the whole series of notes a second time with great precision; and a second of the young attempted to follow her. The wren pursued the same course with this as with the first; and so with the third and fourth. It sometimes happened that the young one would lose the tune three, four, or more times in the same attempt; in which case the mother uniformly began where they ceased, and sung the remaining notes; and when each had completed the trial, she repeated the whole strain. Sometimes two of the young commenced together. The mother observed the same conduct towards them as when one sang alone. This was repeated day after day, and several times in a day.

Apple Math Game for Bulletin Boards

This Apple Math Pattern Illustration is in Creative Commons.

        The Game Rules: Above is a illustration of how teachers might assemble an apple tree on a bulletin board in their classrooms for students to participate in math exercises. One the left is a simple apple shape for cutting from red, green or yellow construction paper. Teachers may post either the answers or problems in advance to the board on her own set of apples. Then students may write out the answers to the apple math game on their own apples and post these on top of the teachers sample problems. For those who get the answers or questions wrong...their apples will fall beneath the tree when the teacher checks their answers.

Printable Clock Face with Hands

        The printable clock can be arranged to keep the scores of school games and contests. Individual teachers will undoubtedly have many other ideas for adapting this template to their classroom work. When each student has his own clock with which to work, he or she can be taught the way the hands move, how the big hand goes fast while the little one moves more slowly, and how the clock shows but half a day's time, etc...

• "L is for lost time" alphabet coloring page
• Color-by-number: Time for bed
• Funny furniture friends to color
• "W is for wake up!" alphabet coloring sheet
  

A traditional clock face with minute and hour hands.

A squirrel pattern for classrooms

       The following template of a squirrel may be used in craft projects, art assignments, as classroom decoration etc...

An outline of a squirrel eating an acorn.

Patterns for A Plains Indian Village

       Both an illustration and a pattern with instructions for a Native American canoe are included below. There are also two native people, a man and a woman, that may be cut out and added to the canoe as well.

Plains native paper dolls for your reconstruction of their village encampment.

       Print and cut from paper then trace around the teepee on top of cardboard to craft a template for young students to use while assembling a village representing Native Americans who once lived on the plains.

A picture of what a Native American village might have looked like on the plains.

The Dog and Goose

A grateful companion.

        A goose was once observed to attach itself in the strongest and most affectionate manner to the house dog, but never presumed to go into the kennel except in rainy weather; whenever the dog barked, the goose would cackle, and run at the person she supposed the dog barked at, and try to bite him by the heels. Sometimes she would attempt to feed with the dog; but this the dog, who treated his faithful companion with indifference, would not suffer. This bird would not go to roost with the others at night, unless driven by main force; and when in the morning they were turned into the field, she would never stir from the yard gate, but sit there the whole day in sight of the dog. At length orders were given that she should no longer be molested; being thus left to herself, she ran about the yard with him all night, and what is particularly remarkable, whenever the dog went out of the yard and ran into the village, the goose always accompanied him, contriving to keep up with him by the assistance of her wings, and in this way of running and flying, followed him all over the parish. This extraordinary affection of the goose towards the dog, which continued till his death, two years after it was first observed, is supposed to have originated in his having saved her from a fox, in the very moment of distress.
       While the dog was ill, the goose never quitted him, day or night, not even to feed; and it was apprehended that she would have been starved to death had not a pan of corn been set every day close to the kennel. At this time the goose generally sat in the kennel, and would not suffer any one to approach it, except the person who brought the dog's, or her own food. The end of this faithful bird was melancholy; for when the dog died, she would still keep possession of the kennel, and a new house dog being introduced, which in size and color resembled that lately lost, the poor goose was unhappily deceived, and going into the kennel as usual, the new inhabitant seized her by the throat and killed her.

A Canine Sheep Stealer

Dog theft by sent at night!

        A shepherd, who was hanged for sheep-stealing, used to commit his depredations by means of his dog. When he intended to steal any sheep, he detached the dog to perform the business. With this view, under pretence of looking at the sheep, with an intention to purchase them, he went through the flock with the dog at his foot, to whom he secretly gave a signal, so as to let him know the particular sheep he wanted, perhaps to the number of ten or twelve, out of a flock of some hundreds; he then went away, and from a distance of several miles, sent back the dog by himself in the night time, who picked out the individual sheep that had been pointed out to him, separated them from the flock, and drove them before him, frequently a distance of ten or twelve miles, till he came up with his master, to whom he delivered up his charge.