Personality Boxes

As the students know, I love to reuse materials, so when I stumbled across over 100 empty mac laptop boxes last week, all in mint condition, with seven different elements that could be reused, my mind started imagining what I could do with them.

Today I gave out an empty box to each student to use for an in-class project called ‘My Personality Box’. The students will have four periods during next week to complete the assignment that we will then set up on display next Friday in a ‘Personality Museum’.

The only limit to the project is your child’s imagination. They can use any school resources they can think of that I can obtain, as well as many things from home with your permission. I do not want this to be a project where children come home saying “I need to go the fabric market so I can buy material to cover my box in purple velvet and sequins” or “Mrs. Power said you HAVE to help me with my box, I need every photo ever taken with me on a horse ” This is supposed to be a fun-filled exploratory project that brings the box alive with the personality of your child. As a parent myself of a 5^th grader, and now Pre-K student, I understand that family time is quality time, and I don’t want it to be stressful for you or your child. You can help them with ideas, suggestions, encouragement and collecting things from home over the next three or four days IF they need it, but at 5^th grade, we are trying to teach independence so see how much help from you they NEED before you volunteer it.

Some of the themes and ideas we discussed in class included turning their box into a garden, a restaurant, a sports stadium, filling it with poetry, turning it into a beach scape, cutting out magazine pictures or words to cover it, shaping the box into some sort of icon-eg. Pearl Tower, Sydney Harbour Bridge, Statue of Liberty.

The main thing is for the box to reflect your child’s personality. Are they loud, bossy, sporty, arty, techy, musical quiet, poetic? What do they enjoy in their spare time? Will their box be filled with recipes, medals, photos, poetry, animals, candy, treasures or lego? I want the box to ooze personality, every single part of the box needs to represent who your child is, where they’ve come from and maybe even where they are going.

Enjoy the journey

Today we also had our first Poetry Friday and the children each have four lines to memorize from Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” one of my favourite all time poems. Ask them what the poem means to them; I’d love to hear if it also means something to you. Comments and e mails always welcome; especially about poetry.

Enjoy your weekend.