Train Picture Frames

This one is an example of me using what is around. I tend to do so much better with figuring out what is around to use and then making a project, instead of thinking of a project and then getting the stuff for it. I'm the same way with cooking. I open up all the cupboards, and the fridge, figure out what I have and then come up with an idea of what I'm making for dinner.
I'm going to keep talking about that Transportation unit I did way back when. After cars we did Trains. Not that a lot of kids were going on trains over the holiday vacation, but it was a good way to tie in The Polar Express. I live in an area that recreates the Polar Express every year and at least half my class was talking about it. Now this is also the time of year that parents like gifts. I always kept to the rule, one holiday gift and one gift with a picture.
This was the one for the picture. A Train picture frame.
At the time I had a director that would come up with stuff that she got for free, and give it to me to do something with. She had just gotten these boxes of letters on circles. I think they were to personalize cards, or something like that.

I figured out (with help from Google image search) how to make some simple geometric pieces into a train. I cut out the pieces and made the big square piece into a frame. I then picked out all the letter for each child's name and put them in cups, all scrambled. I game them a cup with all the pieces and a cup with their name and a visual of how I made my own.

The then got to put them together. They did an amazing job, they got to use their deductions skills on what piece went where. They got to unscramble their name, putting each letter in the right order. And they got to build a train, all in the same project. Needless to say they were super excited to give them to their parents.

On the card that went with, I quoted each on what they wanted to say to their parents. Many commented on how cool the train was that they were bringing home or where they wanted to hang it. This was my favorite holiday project, especially because you wouldn't even know it was for the holidays.

Building Cars

I'm going to go back through my favorite projects that I've done. I love making things out of other things. This is great as a teacher, because it is much easier to save water bottles than it is to get a car kit for every kid.
I had a group that loved cars, really any transportation. Around the holidays all they could talk about was how they were going to get to their different destinations. Not who or where they were going to go, but how they were getting there. So we did a transportation month.
The first week was cars.
We painted with cars, by rolling their wheels in paint and then rolling them on the paper.

We also engineered our own cars. It was a fun project that I got to come up with, and the kids got to bring home a toy they can play with. Here is how we did it:
Supplies

Vitamin Water Bottles (They are thicker than regular water bottles and hold up to what you will do to them)
Long wind Chimes (from oriental trading company)
Round wood pieces (or Beads with a big enough hole to fit onto the wind chimes)
Hot Glue
A Drill

Pom Poms (optional)
Pipe cleaners (optional)

We started by drilling holes into the bottles to fit the wind chimes through. The Wind Chimes would become the axles. I did the drilling in class with the kids at a good distance. Some of the kids were so excited about a power tool being used in the class, they tried to take home the bottles with just the holes in them.
I then had the kids fit the "axles" through the holes. They had to figure out which holes fit together to get a straight axle. Then we proceeded to pick out matching wood pieces. They just needed two sets of two wheels. So that each axle had the same wheel on each side.
I did the hot glue part, affixing the wood to each side of the wind chimes that where now in the bottles.
We finished off the project with putting pom poms and pipe cleaners inside the bottles to make them pretty.

We then ran into a problem. To maintain structural integrity I had made the holes too high up the side of the bottles. So they "belly" of our cars kept them from being on all four wheels. We figured this out by making tracks on the floor. The wheels rolled along both sides on the blocks while the bottle hung down in the middle. They got to engineer the tracts as well, making sure the side where not to far apart and not to close, as well as keeping them straight.

We had so much fun, that we played with them all day for the next week. If they went home, they came back, because the kids couldn't put them down. It was so much fun.

We got to practice taking turns, balancing, and of course our engineering abilities. I can't wait to do this project again some day!