Korean Job Discussion Forums

[thursdays child]

I need to plan 3 different classes where we do christmas crafty stuff. HELP!!! I'm uncrafty!!

This is the situation:
1. High school girls - approx 25-35 per class
2. 50 min class
3. CHEAP - the materials need to stretch between 200 students

[Demonicat]

Ornaments sound good. Either make some craft dough out of flour and water, or just go real cheap and get some heavy paper, glitter glue, and coloured pencils.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

How interesting. Here's my situation:


I'd like to plan one or two different classes where we do christmas crafty stuff. HELP!!! I'm uncrafty!!

This is the situation:
1. High school girls - approx 18-42 per class
2. 50 min class
3. CHEAP - the materials need to stretch between 250 students


I'm thinking about having them make Christmas cards on 8"X11" pieces of paper. I could also give a few handouts where we label stuff. Beyond that and some songs I'm at a complete loss, so any comments to this thread more helpful than mine would also be much appreciated.

[Ekuboko]

I make Christmas cards, too.
You just need A4 paper, scissors and coloured pencils/pens, crayons, etc.

I usually show them some cards I've made - they draw half a picture on the folded pape, coloured in and cut out in various shapes (e.g. Santa, tree, angel..)

Then I teach them simple greetings to write inside a Christmas card. They can choose to address the card to whoever they want - teacher, friend or someone in their family.

You can get the students to pin their cards up on a corkboard as they finish, and then judge the best three or something. Even though overall I had a bad semester at that school, the students did a good job in this class, and they were really proud of their work, with most of them wanting to take their cards home.
I've done all of this in a middle school 45 minute class successfully, and I used to do it in Japanese elementary schools (4th-6th grades, 40minutes) too.

I'll post some pictures later of the templates and cards I made, as well as some students' cards from last year.

[Demonicat]

Another idea, that while not as cheap as plain paper IS relatively cheap is no-bake cookies. This is easily spread out over 50 minutes as you describe the exact steps of cookng. A bonus is that high school girls will probably enjoy cooking and getting to eat the cookies:
:

* 1/2 cup butter (Margarine SHOULD work)
* 3 cups quick cooking oats
* 1/2 cup milk
* 5 tablespoons cocoa powder
* 2 cups white sugar
* 1/2 cup peanut butter
* 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
* 1/2 cup raisins (optional)
* 1/2 cup flaked coconut (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Cook butter or margarine, milk and sugar in kettle and boil for 1 and 1/2 minutes.
2. Add peanut butter, oatmeal, baking cocoa and any one of the optional ingredients.
3. Drop on waxed paper and allow to cool before serving.

[Demonicat]

You could also do santa clauses by rolling Red hard paper into a cone, attaching some pare hands via glue and adding beard, trim, etc with construction paper or paints.

[Pak Yu Man]

Go out and chop down a tree. Very illegal (whatever).

Then bring it in to your class and tell them to use stuff to make Christmas decorations for the wondertree. (The school might buy a tree...but most hogwon owners/school managers are cheap bastards).

You might want to give them some notice and tell them to bring some stuff from home. This way it costs you/the school....even less.

[peppermint]

If you're going with the cards- you can get 500 sheets of construction paper at costco for about 10,000W

[blunder1983]

In my old primary school in England we used to have a "santa mail service" where the kids could send xmas cards to each other. I'm going to make Xmas cards in one class and have them use me to deliver them in the last week before xmas. Should be fun.

I'm looking into making Xmas crackers but I dont think you can get cracker snaps over here

Other Xmas lessons we're gonna be doing:

Christmas story + carols
The Snowman movie + questions

I think the Snowman will rock for my middle school girls, its silent except the song "We're walking in the air" (Aled Jones with his girly voice )

Should tide me over to almost holidays, then I'm in my final stretch!

[Alan_Partridge]

Blunder1983....one of the British teachers at my school makes xmas crackers each year, and he gets the things that go bang (sorry, I really have no idea what they're called!)
Unfortunately, he's just gone on holiday for a week, but when he comes back, I'll ask him where he gets his stuff (you might want to pm next week, because with my memory, I'll probably have already forgotten by then!!)

edit...Ahh, cracker snaps! (shocking how badly my English skills have gone downhill since I started teaching young children...)

[winnie]

Here are some card templates, you can have them colour them, or just use them as example cards.

http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/xmas/cards/

[thursdays child]

Ta for the great responses. No bake cookies sounds good.... and the crackers really want to learn how to make the bang - that's really the thing with crackers, isn't it? Thank you

[Ekuboko]

Here are some photos of the cards I made with students last year.


The template models I drew up (on folded paper)- actually I can't draw to save myself so I don't know how I managed to draw something so cute.


Coloured-in templates and one cut out.


Some that students made.


Students' cards, inside and out.

(Some students also made cards shaped as a bell, a star, a wreath and gift boxes...)
The best thing about it is that it is low stress and you will have the students occupied, not causing any trouble. Relatively low mess factor, too.

[ajuma]

Try making paper snowflakes! They're easy, cheap...and the kids can use scissors or one of those x-acto knives to cut them.

http://www.papersnowflakes.com/