An elf sat in a tree, painting leaves to throw at me...

I'm known for having the neatest, tidiest classroom at my school and I hardly ever do art projects in my classroom.  I shudder at the thought of paint in my room and break out in hives if there are scraps of paper on the floor.  But I'm trying to change my ways because I've come to realize that art IN the classroom is valuable and important and because I see lots of cute projects on Pinterest :-)

The project my students worked on this week was a mixed-media tree with an accompanying poem.  

I luckily had a parent volunteer who cut out and glued together the brown and white backgrounds for all of my students.  On Tuesday, during my reading groups, students did part 1: Make your tree by cutting or ripping paper and gluing your poem onto the front (and highlighting the rhyming words).

On Wednesday they first cut out and colored their little elf and then used wine works to paint/stamp their leaves on.  The final step was putting their little elf in their tree.

The prep and clean-up were minimal and very easy, perfect for me!

Now I'll hang them up in the hall and impress my colleagues.

Here's the poem:

A little elf sat in a tree,

Painting leaves to throw at me.

Leaves of yellow and leaves of red,

Came tumbling down upon my head.

I found it on this GREAT website for kid poetry:  www.canteach.ca/elementary/songspoems.html