2 Minute Frankenstein Craft

Need a quick Frankenstein craft? I designed the one above for my students to write character traits on the back after we read about Frank and Mary Shelley.  

All you need to do is simply cut out a green circle and purple/black circle per student.  The students design the hair and put their Frankenstein face together.  I found felt eyes at Target, but you could have students draw them on.  They're a perfect way to allow students to build fine motor skills without taking up a lot of class time.  You can have students glue the faces to a writing sheet or write on the back of the circle.  Have fun!  

Did you know that the author Mary Shelley had to overcome quite a bit to become one of the world's most infamous authors.  If you need a kid friendly biography or fiction story about Frankenstein click below.

Character Traits with Mrs. Labrasciano

The kids LOVED our character traits kick-off lesson this week!  They each did an amazing job.  To start the week off I explained to the kids that character traits were words that could describe us on the inside or outside.  After brainstorming positive traits I had the kids make their own character traits on personal busts.  This lesson led into more character trait lessons with picture books.  Students were able to describe a character's actions in the beginning of a book through the end of the book.  After they describe how the character changed or completed a character analysis.

Character Traits With Mrs. Labrasciano

After introducing personal character traits, we moved into Wemberly Worried.  I have a student who is just like Wemberly! This was a great opportunity to help them through their anxiety and work on our comprehension at the same time.  The kids love to put together projects so I made them a folder activity that helped us to see how Wemberly changes in the book.

Wemberly Worried

Wemberly Worried

What's Under Your Cape? A Character Book Study Chapter 5- R Is ForRespect

What's Under Your Cape?

Earlier in the summer I stumbled upon an author by the name of Barbara Gruener.  She had recently written a book titled, ""What's Under Your Cape?"  Every teacher that spoke about the book had nothing but wonderful things to say. So I decided to order the book directly from her website.  When it arrived I was delighted to find that she had autographed it for me. How nice was that?  I was immediately drawn in by her first hand accounts of how different character building worked for her children, students and community. I could relate to her book because she wrote from the perspective of a mom and educator (counselor).  The bonus was that the book is a quick read which means that you can implement it in your class immediately.

Shortly after reading the book I was lucky enough to join a book study.  Today I'll be referencing chapter 5 along with Tiffani from Time 4 Kindergarten.  One of my favorite topics, R-E-S-P-E-C-T! My favorite mantra that Ms. Gruener quotes is, "May I be treated tomorrow how I treated people today." This is a concept that seems integral to a society that works well together.  She is quick to point out that we can't expect children to understand the abstract view of respect without showing them concrete behaviors that go along with respect.  The book also details a picture book, song and activities to accompany teaching children about respect. It then goes into how bullying goes hand in hand with disrespect.  Respecting others means that children will not turn into bullies.  In a perfect world everyone would live this concept.  So you will have to read the book to get her suggestions, but I am going to offer some resources from youtube to accompany the book.

Video On Respect

Song About Respect

Defining Respect

I recently blogged about using character education bracelets to help turn the abstract learning of character traits into concrete tangible learning.  Click the picture for the post.

If you missed the beginning of the book study, you can click here:

To get to the next chapter click here:

Be sure to check out Tiffani's post on Chapter 5 here: