Teacher Appreciation Door Decorations

I was just thinking as I finished up a door decoration for my daughter's class that I've done nine of these wall sized art projects over the years and it is a shame I haven't taken many pictures of them. I did find some of my ideas on the computer though.  So my blog entry today is just my ideas over the years for door decorations.  I usually pick the ideas based on something I know about the teacher or the class.  Most of my sketches are pretty rough, I wish I had more pictures:(  Most of the door decorations have cutouts for the kids to write their names on thats what all the little cutouts are in the pictures.  For the ninja one we wrote all the names on the background in ninja script, it was a lot of fun.  For the teacher that liked Hawaii, we took pictures of all the kids in the class surfing and put them on surfboards instead of writing their names.  The fishing boat was the first one I ever did and a friend helped me, it was cuter than the picture.  One teacher had a zoo theme all year so we did a monkey.  Another teacher liked to play the guitar so we put a guitar on her door.  One teacher had a VERY rambunctious class that was always getting "carried away", so we did the ant picnic for her.  This year I just did pop art because I like pop art and I'm about out of ideas.

their names on.  

Nursery Easter Lesson

I got the text out of the LDS New Testament Stories, and the pictures are from "Baby's First Easter"

Cadette Special Agent Badge

Lots of fun, Lots of work! (updated post)
if you are interested in files for the mystery we solved, the suspect roles they acted out, the sticky fingers activity, the fingerprint chart, the forensic document examiner activity, etc. e-mail me, I can't post it all here!

Fingerprinting Gathering Activity (requirement #1)

As they arrived we fingerprinted all the girls and made a chart showing how many fingers were loops, whorls, and arches.  Compared it to the national average!

·       CSI Party, play detective! (requirement #1)

We had a crime scene and then solved the case to find out who killed Jack Duck!

Careers: Crime Scene Photographer requirement #5 Photograph crime scene	Reading Body Language, Detecting Lies requirement #4  Girls acted out all the suspects and different types of body language cues.
Play Detective requirement #1 Girls solved a case called sticky fingers using fingerprint minutiae.	Forensic Lab requirement #3 Make fake-blood droplet cards and analyze the difference shapes of blood droplets based on angle and distance.  (I've included pictures of the other two options if you have more time they aren't as messy!)
Eyewitness Activity requirement #2 Girls learn about the unreliability of eyewitnesses and try their hand at drawing suspects.	Careers: Forensic Document Examiner requirement #5 Girls learn to look closely at handwriting and look for clusters of similarities to make an identification.  Girl's use writing samples to identify who left the note found at the crime scene for clue #5. Bonus: not forensics at all, girls learned about handwriting analysis which is like a personality test and was totally fun!!

We had a small snack and drink between one of the activities because this was a long activity with a lot of work for the girls to do!

CSI Party:

We based ours loosely off the CSI Date, but added two more suspects: Rita Booke and Anita Faber.

requirement #5 Careers (optional, we did two careers, you only need to do one)

Crime Scene Photography by the Book 
Supplies

·      Enough photography checklists for every camera, phone, iPad, etc you will be doing photography with.

5 minutes Give a list of of careers in forensics, explain the purpose of crime scene photography and how to do it correctly.

10 minutes Have girls be Crime Scene Investigators!  Take pictures according to the FBI handbook.  Take some fun pictures too!

Gross, we should have done murder by poison!

Requirement #2 

Reading Body Language, Detecting lies 

Supplies

·      Suspect statements
     list of body language clues and what they indicate

·      optional:  a hat or clothing prop for each suspect

3-5 minutes instruction on how to read body language and detect lies (not making eye contact, blushing, raising vocal pitch, touching face, scratching nose, fidgeting, repeating words like honestly or truthfully, leaving out details in a story, or changing the story when told repeatedly, blinking frequently.)

10 minutes read suspect statements and start guessing who did it and why!

Requirement #1

Investigation Activity 

Supplies

·      Minutiae Chart 

·      "Sticky Fingers Case" available from internet, pencils

3-5 minutes instruction on the importance of minutiae in identifying fingerprints

10 minutes solve the “sticky fingers” case answer these questions as they work through the case:

What type of finger print pattern is each finger of the suspects?

Is this combination of fingerprint patterns common? No, extremely rare.

Find two minutiae on the suspect’s fingerprints.

Try to match the crime scene fingerprints to the suspect prints.

Was the suspect at the crime scene? Yes

Was the suspect most likely right or left-handed? Right

Are the location of his prints at the crime scene consistent with a customer or a thief? Thief-they are on the cash register.

Is it surprising that the prints on the bakery display case don’t match the thief? No.

Requirement #3

Forensic Science Lab (3 options!)
Blood Spatter

Supplies:

·      2 packets red Crystal Light (enough to make 2 quarts) 

·      2 teaspoons boiling water

·      Paper cup

·      Straws

·      Coffee Stirrer or Capri Sun straws

·      White construction paper

·      Ruler

·      Measuring tape

·      Something to protect walls and floor like a disposable tablecloth, butcher paper, newspaper, large cardboard box.

·      Instruction papers, pencils

·      Optional: aprons or paint shirts

3-5 minute instruction on what Forensic Science is, how it helps solve crimes, and how to do this science project.

10 minutes to make blood spatter cards 

Don't focus too much on blood aspect since these are middle school girls that we don't want to scare, just have fun with the shapes!

See what splatter looks like for each of the following:

Or try Chromatography
Step 1: cut paper towels into long strips
Step 2: Put a marker dot or line near the bottom of paper towel strip
Step 3: Tape the paper towel to the pencil
Step 4: Fill the container so the water will barely touch the paper towel

Step 5: Hang the paper towel into the conainer from the pencil
Step 6: Watch the paper towel absorb the water.  As the water moves up the paper towel the color separates into the colors it was made from
step 7: let it sit until all the colors are separated (takes awhile, might want to have one done so the girls don't have to wait so long)
step 8 take paper towel out of container!



or try DNA extraction
do this with bananas or here are 10 other foods to try...

Requirment #2

Eyewitness Activity (requirement #2 and forensic artist career #5)

Supplies:

·      Computer(s) if using the “Art of Detection” game from the internet OR make your own with
     a photo suspect, video suspect, or guest suspect to run through the room

·      Pencils; paper

3-5 minutes discussion on forensic sketch artists, how learning to drawing certain shapes and features is like learning a language, the more you draw the larger your drawing vocabulary is.  Most people don’t pay attention to shapes and spacing of eyes, eyebrows, noses, and face shapes.  Most people do notice hair color and skin color.  Discuss why eyewitness accounts are often very unreliable and why that might be (weather, stress, health, personal bias).  Explain what the Innocence Project is and share a story about wrongful conviction. 

10 minutes Try drawing a suspect.  Girls can even describe someone they know to their partner and see how they do. 

We had a footprint comparison for them to solve for this requirement.
Answer to "Art of Detection" computer activity:

Rotation #6  

Forensic Document Examiner 

3-5 minutes: Talk about how handwriting always varies and no one writes the same way every time.  Talk about how a "cluster of similarities" can be used to indicate a match between a known writing sample and an unknown document.  Talk about the main points to 
compare.
10 minutes: match a few up handwriting samples and

******************************Just For fun: Handwriting can give a peek into your personality.  Make a writing sample and analyze it.  Our girls LOVED this!

Slant of base line

Size of letters

Dots on i and crosses on t.

Spacing

Neatness of letters

Family Picture

Letter O preschool day

O is for Octopus!

Gathering Activity: Build with blocks or paint color circles (cardstock works best, but ordianary paper will do) I encouraged the children to make four different colors.  Some of them wanted to paint 3 or 4 color circles.  A few of my younger ones just built with duplos and had me paint for them.  I'm not super picky as long as they have fun.  (Boys especially often learn from blocks and Legos better than paint.)  I used finger paint since thats what I had, but I'm sure washable tempera paint would be best.  I had a pile of q-tips and paint brushes and textured items to stamp with, but what I liked best was painting the textures with a q-tip and then stamping.  I was going for octopus camoflauge so I did orange swirls for coral, q-tip dots for bubbles, blue/green/purple for rocks, and I did a purple fish.  The kids free paint was very cute, the ones I did were a bit boring. I didn't have any full circles left for the picture, sorry!

 If a child's color circle doesn't have four, distinct backgrounds or if they want to use colors from more than one circle you can cut and paste/tape down onto the card stock and then outline it with a sharpie.  

If the paint dries, these can be assembled at class, otherwise make holes for the fasteners and show the parents a sample and have them fasten at home.  I put our paintings in the dehydrator for 20 minutes to speed drying times, but that is probably not something most people have on hand.

color circles

Letter Awareness:

We looked for the letter O on favorite food packages and ate some!  Orange juice would have been good for this or cheerios and Froot Loops.

Literacy:

Little Owl's Night by Divya Srinivasan

before reading=Do you go to bed at night or in the morning?  When do you think baby owls go to bed?  What does an owl do for fun all night long?  This is a funny kind of bedtime story because the owl goes to sleep in the morning!

Octopus Alone by Divya Srinivasan

before reading=does anyone ever bug you? do you ever want to be alone where it is quiet?  Do you know someone who is shy?  Are you shy?  An octopus is shy, watch her hide in her cave and watch everyone else play!  

while reading= when she is happy in her cave she is ________(orange)

how many seahorses come to tickle her?________(1,2,3)

When she leaves the cave what color does she turn?___________(blue)

When she is stripey can you find her?

Here she turns pink!

When she is scared of the eel what color does she turn?___________(white)  

See how she changes shape when she swims fast.

After she sees the whale she looks bubbly, where are the bubbles?

She misses her friends, so she goes home, can you find them all?  What fish is the prettiest?  Do you see the shark?

Science:

Watch this 4min video of real octopuses playing hide n' seek.  Gray plant, scared giant cloud, brown rock, green plant.  Where's the Octopus?  (I skip over the color cells part).  There is a 1 min mimic octopus film that shows zebra stripes and the octopus being a poisonous fish too!

Free Play and Take Home Craft:

I finish with free play while we assemble the take home craft.  

brass fasteners ($3 walmart), tape, glue stick, doubled sided tape (if possible), sharpie marker (optional).

top layer: Print the octopus on transparency paper (similar price to color prints) or trace onto a page protector with sharpie and cut it out.  Print the text pages on regular paper glue or double sided tape together.

:

I attached the octopus text page on top of the transparency with double sided tape for speed, but glue or cleat tape on the edges could workk too.  Put this on top of the color circle.  Stab a hole in the middle with an exacto knife or something very sharp.  Insert a brass fastener.  If the color circle is still drying just put the holes in the transparency page and color circles.  The pages can be fastened together later.

Winning Science Fair Projects

You really don't have to win, but if you have a meaningful project, what you learn will help you throughout your life!  It isn't about the best experiment, it is about the best process and display.

A winning project

1. The display should be neat, creative, and easy to understand!  (In our state students get 30 pts for appearance of display.  They get 30 points for the skill involved in the project, so the appearance and work are equally important.  You should spend as much time on the board as you do on the experiment.)
2. Have great background research.  Cite or even include more than one background research article, interview, or book.  Cite them correctly using a bibliography app.  Summarize the most important facts you learned from the background research and put them in your project write-up under Background Research.  Use these points to form your question and hypothesis.  Many students just do a science experiement.  They miss out on research, question, and hypothesis and add those at the end.  Research if very often completely missed.  (In our state students get 10 pts for this if they have research and the dates that it was done in their project write-up, this can be a tie-breaker.)
3. Have a strong hypothesis.  It is much stronger if you explain "why".  (You might base it on your research, or similar research studies that have been done.)  
4. Write down observations during the experiment.  This is called "Data".
5. Find the best way to illustrate this data graphically.  this is "Results".  Not all students are sure what the difference is between "data" and "results".  (If the graph is labeled clearly and is easy to understand the students get an extra  10pts.  Don't just put a graph on your board, make sure ANYONE looking at it will understand what it means.)
6. The conclusion should clearly state whether your hypothesis was supported by your results, mention surprising findings if there were any, and mention anything that you think would be interesting to study further.
7. Be creative in your topic/experiment.  I put this last because the other things can compensate for having a typical project, but not vice versa. (creativity 10 points)
8. At the district and regional level our students get an additional 10 points for clearly describing their project to judges, 10 points for understanding their subject matter well in the interview, and another tie breaker is 10 points for being the overall best project in comparison to others.

Note: the excellence of your actual experiment and how creative it was is 40pts, communicating it well through journal, display, and graphs is 50 pts!

Bonus points for communication

The entire purpose of going to school is to learn how to communicate ideas, whether through numbers, writing, spelling, music, pictures, charts, graphs, or just body language.  A huge part of the score at science fair is based on how well you and your display communicate what you did.  I often see an overused topic and experiment still win because of great research and had a neat, organized display.     Imagine if your display, research, and experiment were all amazing...

Great Display Tips

1-Projct display is very neat and organized
2-Take the time to choose great colors (consider painting the background a new color if it helps tell the story of your project better), fonts (maybe a theme font for your title would help), font sizes, and graphics (tell it with pictures if you can).
3-My kids aren't allowed any science fair props, just the display board.  I tell them to make good use of pictures and iconic images to grab interest, entertain, and tell the story of their project.
If they did electricity--a black board with a yellow bolt of lightening serves well, an experiment on learning modes of special needs children can have crayons or ABC blocks.  If it was a project about dogs, paw prints around the edges are great.  A project on fingerprinting had a giant fingerprint and magnifying glass in the middle.  I encourage students to set aside a little time to put a neat, well thought attention grabber on their project display board.  This tells the story from across the room and draws interest to the project.
4-The title should grab attention and tell about what you did.  Avoid "Gravity" or "Magnets" or "Plants".  It needs to tell more specifics.  Often the question makes a good title.  If the question is too long, think of something else that is interesting and summarizes the project well.  It is the most remembered part of the display, make sure it has good contrast with your background color and that it isn't too small to read from a distance or too large for your board.  2 inch letters are about as small as you can go.
5- Put the most important information in the first sentence of every text box.  That might be all judges read.  For example your conclusion shouldn't wait until the last sentence to say whether your hypothesis was correct.  The experiment text box should give you as much information in the first sentence as possible and then elaborate.  For example: "We tested children's capability to memorize before and after large amounts of sugar... " rather than "First we took permission slips to 10 homes that had children between the ages of 3 and 8, then we set up several trial dates, then we made appointments...."  Also, if you are able to use pictures with short labels that is sometimes an easier way to convey information.
6- Label your graphs in a way that someone unfamiliar with your project can quickly learn the information.  A graph is required, but if the labels aren't very clear, no one will know what they are talking about and they will be ignored.  My boys labeled one of their graphs on electric current "Intensity".  I had them go back and relabel it "Intensity of the light when different sized magnets were placed next to the circuit"  It was a long title, but with the new label, judges can see at a glance that putting a magnet next to an electric current reduces how brightly the lightbulb shines.  They don't even have to read the conclusion, in an instant they can see the answer to the question (how do magnets affect...) as well as that the hypothesis was correct (they will cause the lightbulb to be dimmer).  Now the judges have time to focus on how well researched the project was and to talk to the boys about how well they understand the topic they are presenting.  They have time to be impressed instead of trying to make out what the project was all about.

Tips:

Text Contrast:

Do NOT break the following rule!
All text must have sufficient contrast!  Light text on a dark background or dark on light.  No dark text on medium or medium text on anything!  Since printers are black you must rule out printing on almost all colors, but white and maybe light pastels.  In order to have a two-tone color scheme on your display it is almost always best to have a background color.  And then use colored borders on your pictures, charts, and text boxes.  Most boards start out white, but for 1-2 dollars you can buy a can of spray paint and change the color.  You can also use wrapping paper, butcher paper, or contact paper.  This is the science of getting noticed and requires as much thought and time as the scientific research you do.

Storyboard to ensure neatness:
Plan your display.  Sketch your board out to scale on paper.  Plan how much room each picture, chart, or text box will take including the colored borders if you will be using those.  This is important, because when you type, you will know how much space you have and how big to make the fonts or how big to print the pictures.  It helps you avoid printing things out too big or too small.  It helps you know when you need to cut and trim text.

If you will have a report with your display choose a cover that matches the board and is visually appealing.  These little details set your project apart and get the judges attention instantly.  They don't know why, they just like it better and can score you tie breaking points!

Example of using Icons:
below, the red "x" and green checks, lightening bolt.

Some winning projects from district:

 this project very clearly shows all the steps of the scientific process and judges are looking for this.  The conclusion textbox has the most important part highlighted, I liked that too.  The title was a bit boring, so there is always room for improvement.



















I liked the clothesline icon with the fabric shrinking project, creative for sure!


Paw print icons for the pet handed-ness project, memorable.



Sugar bag colored project board with great 3-D graph.  There was a picture of the drink with a ziplock of how much sugar each contained in front of it.  I always like pictures better than words if they will convey the message!



The title is repeated in picture form with a brain lifting weights, I love it!



 Title makes me curious, the video game controller under the title is a great attention grabber.



The comical cocoa cups took this title "Hot or Not" from boring to interesting.


The whole project is easy to understand in a brief glance, I noticed this one from a distance.



Great icons for "emotions", nice color scheme!


I see this science project done every year and it is always an attention getting project.  This is an example of winning despite not having a terribly difficult or creative project.