Fun Project: Sports Collage

Some of the parents asked me about the project we did in class this past week, because the children came home excited about their creations.  What we made were Sports Collages focusing on identifying pictures related to specific sports.  Our 1st Graders were reading sports stories relating to non-fiction and author's purpose.  Kindergarten has been comparing/contrasting elements of stories by looking at what was the same/different in various stories.  We have also been doing picture sorts based upon beg. letter sounds.  I decided to blend the multiple learning objectives and allow the class to have some fun working in groups to identify similar elements of a specific sport (ie. football players have helmets, pads, footballs, etc.).  I sorted the class into groups of 4-5, and gave each group a different sport to search for.  They had to scour through various ESPN magazines to find pictures that matched their specific sport.  Then they cut out the pictures and glued them to their poster.  The class had 30 minutes to try and fill their poster with as many pictures as they could on the specific sport they were given.  When time was over, we cleaned up the class and shared our posters.  The class worked very well together and created some wonderful collages.  The nice thing about this project, is that it can be duplicated at home with simple ease.  You can use the Sunday newspaper to make a collage about everyday things (clothes, food, toys, etc.). You can use old magazines to identify story elements (heroes, villians, animals, places, etc.).  You can even use old books or magazines to identify specific letters or words (find the sight word "like", find the letter "p", etc.).  It can be used to help reinforce learning objectives from school, or can be played for fun on a rainy day.  If your child liked this activity, and you have the resources to allow them to repeat it at home, I encourage your family to go for it.  They can even bring in their creations to share with the class.  Have Fun!!!