New Years Craftivity

Happy New Year! I had an overwhelmingly positive response to the craftivity I posted on Instagram yesterday that asked if I would share this template with you! I have included it as a freebie below. This post contains affiliate links for your shopping connivence. 

This craftivity it the perfect way to kick-start your first week back on a good note! I start off by reading the touching story, "How to Catch a Star" by Oliver Jeffers. Click here to order yourself a copy! 

This book sends a motivational message about goal setting. This can be used at the start of the year and also lends itself perfectly to the meaning of the buzz word we hear this time of year- resolution.

We spent some time turning and talking to our neighbors about personal goals we had, as well as goals for our class. After our discussion, we closed with formulating our own definition of the word resolution.

You can find the materials needed to make the craftivity about here. I included it up through year 2020 for your files. Please note the "noise maker" strips are not inclosed in the file. They are simply strips of Astrobrights paper found here. You can get the curl effect by teaching your students to roll the strips around a pencil or marker. 

In full disclosure, I am a pre-cut craftivity teacher. Therefore, I created this template just for those who may need it, but please be sure to use it to make a model to adjust size accordingly. For the one picture above, I used my own freehand precut pieces. 

With the limited amount of time we have for crafts in class, I find that personally precutting the pieces beforehand minimizes the amount of time it takes to complete a craft. You can have students simply cut the pieces or even print on cardstock and use as templates for tracers. I even know of teachers who make a model and have students free cut their own pieces. Whichever works best for you and your students!

I want to share with you that although I included a face template in the download, it is so nice having these multicultural skin tone face cut outs on hand for any craftivity. They are perfect for crafts all year long and I love giving my students the freedom of their skin tone choice. They love it too! :) You can find them here. 

Can we also just take a minute to take a look at how absolutely adorable this goal is? All from the mind of a 7 year old! If you can't make it out, it says "My goal for 2017 is to learn to write Javascript." *Be still my heart!* I have to remember this one day when I'm knee deep in blogging code. 

And this one too! Run a 5K- you go girl!!!!!

Another quick tip! I love to have name labels printed for my crafts. I have a master copy on paper that I keep in the labels envelope. I copy the master on the labels as needed. You can find the labels here. 

I hope you can find this useful in your classroom! What are some of your goals for 2017?!