Brooklyn Post Cards + Pen Pals

My mom teaches 3rd grade in San Francisco so when I met my 3rd graders for the first time I knew I wanted to do a Pen Pal project.  Who doesn't love getting a personal, hand made card in the mail?  I also thought it would be a neat way for the kids to teach each other about their cities.  We looked at images of Brooklyn cityscapes and urban landmarks and thought of special places in our own neighborhoods.  To create the cards, Students then watercolored a background on postcard sized watercolor paper that I found at a craft store.  To make the cityscapes even more "New York" they cut out buildings and city elements from the New York Times.  They finished off their collages with sharpies.  On the back they wrote letters to their Pen Pals in San Francisco, telling them about their favorite places in Brooklyn.  The most exciting part was getting wonderful cards back from San Francisco.  

Accordion Name Books

This project was an excellent choice as an ice-breaker. I got to know the kids names and they got to express their identities. We started by thinking of words that described our personalities and interests that started with letters in our name. Students then designed graphic letters to represent these descriptive words. From there we folded strips of drawing paper into accordion books (this was the most challenging part!!) and drew our final graphic letters using color sticks, markers, crayons, colored pencils and sharpies. I was so impressed with the care and creativity these third graders put into these.