Valentines Day

Combine science with art in a project that let your children's love truly glow! Make a simple electrical circuit with a small bulb / bulb holder. Cut a small card rectangle and glue foil on one side, then fold in half. Attach wires ,one to one half and one to the other with wires exposed on the foil side. This will make a simple switch for the children to turn the light on and off.
Next take a coleslaw tub and make a slot in the base to feed the wires and switch through. Attach the light bulb / holder to the base inside the tub.
To make the heart draw around the top of the tub on red card. Use a template to draw a larger heat around this circle and cut it out. Inside the circle draw as large a heart as possible and cut it out (You should now have 2 heart shapes on 1 piece of card. Glue red cellophane / tissue paper over cut out inner heart on the reverse side. Glue heart over top of the tub, press the switch and watch your heart glow!

Smiling faces!

Combine technology with art to produce a lovely mobile that will link perfectly with an 'All About Me' project. Take some close-up photos of your childrens' faces and print out large to stick on a paper plate. Your children can add hair , a hat and shirt top to decorate this further. Then ask the children to type sentences telling you a bit about themselves (i.e. My favourite food is pizza, I have a dog called Spot etc). The children can cut these out and stick them onto coloured card rectangles and glue to a strip of ribbon that will hang underneath the plate. It's sure to make you and parents smile when they walk in and see these happy faces each day!

Chinese Lanterns

Chinese New Year will soon be here and today my class and I made Chinese lanterns using paper plates. Very simply you will need:
4 x small paper plates
Gold curling ribbon
Red or yellow florists ribbon

On each face of the paper plates draw and colour something that is linked with China (we chose a dragon, fireworks, ying/yang sign and Chinese writing. The children can draw and colour these using a mix of watercolour paints, felt tips and crayons. (Pre-draw the images for younger children). Once decorated stand the plates on end and staple the sides together, forming a square. Punch a hole in the top of each plate to thread the gold ribbon through to hand the lantern and staple long strips of red / yellow ribbon to the bottom of each plate.
Hang near a doorway to ensure the draft moves the ribbons.

Your classroom will now look full of colour and movement.

Invisible Mobiles

Make your mobiles look as if they are suspended in mid-air by using clear nylon thread. This really helps to stop anything detracting from the overall appearance of the work you are hanging (which ribbon , coloured wool and twine can sometimes do). It is possible to buy this clear nylon thread from art suppliers/display specialists but my advice would be to visit your local fishing shop and buy their clear nylon fishing line. It comes in different strengths (which is useful if you know you have a heavy object to suspend rather than a tissue box for instance) and most importantly is often a lot cheaper too! I have successfully used this to suspend a 6ft long 3D killer whale and a 3D chinese dragon which looked really effective. It's one of my 'must haves' now when putting up displays and I'm sure you'll find it indispensible too.

Hope to meet you soon!

Take a deep breath, countdown............and launch into blogging! Welcome to my blog on classroom display and ideas. All teachers are passionate about their children and I believe that there is no greater way to show the world what your children have achieved than with a truly awe-inspiring display that both children and adults will want to come and look at. I love display and the creative challenge that it gives me both at the start of each term and during the term as my display is changed and added to. I will be running a seminar at the Education Show on Friday 27th March at 3.30pm - here is a taster of what will be covered:

Seminar Details
"The 5th wall is the ceiling - a often neglected area of display that can truly bring the classroom alive with mobiles displaying both written work and art work that link with projects and topics. This seminar will aim to give ideas not only for displaying work on the main 4 walls as well as the 5th wall and tools and ideas to take away and use within the classroom. Display skills will help teachers to "dress their windows" in a more interesting manner that will make parents, Heads and Govenors stop and take note of the work that is going on. Too often display can be flat and boring - this seminar will give ideas on how to turn a 2D display into a 3D display and give ideas , examples and solutions that the teachers who attend this course can take away with them and start using."

I will be starting to put ideas, tips and links to other useful sites on over the next few weeks and look forward to possibly meeting some of you at the show in March.