Fourth grade students studying rocks and minerals got a real treat from sub Anne Phillips.  They used white pipe cleaners to sculpt various snowflake shapes and suspended these finished shapes to a craft stick hanging in a solution of Borax and water.  Within about three hours there were crystals growing on the snowflake pipe cleaners.  They then attached a ribbon for hanging and a personalized name tag with the year to take home as a holiday ornament.

True Kelly brought supplies for a listening and response Christmas lesson.  Each student was given a large format paper and copies of the traditional lyrics to The Twelve Days of Christmas.  While listening to the song performed by Judy Collins, students drew Christmas imagery and then displayed their interpretations in the classroom.  The students also practiced improvisational skills and studied vocabulary in the lyrics of the song.

Anne Phillips read and discussed The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree by Gloria Houston.  Students were excited to learn that the story takes place right in Spruce Pine!  The main character is given the angel from the tree as a gift, and in reference to the book students created their own angels to take home for their Christmas trees.  They used lace doilies for the body, silver cups cake papers for the wings, circle cut outs for the head and students added hair, eyes, etc. with colored pencils and glitter.  Lots of GLITTER!  When they were done, they decorated the classroom Christmas tree with their creations.

Students have been studying Cherokee culture – specifically the Trail of Tears.  Over several weeks, students will journal as if they were a Cherokee child on the Trail of Tears.  With the help of Anne Phillips students collected sticks outside to use as the spine of their journal and used thick black paper for the front and back cover.  Anne also brought a copy of the Cherokee alphabet and the class translated each student’s name to Cherokee.  The students personalized their journals with their Cherokee name and colored pencil drawings.  They cut paper to fit inside the journal cover and assembled the whole journal with string and a stick.

Anne Phillips prepared a Thanksgiving lesson for third grade students.  Each student was given tempera paint and a large cut out of a turkey feather.  They reviewed primary and secondary colors and she showed them how to mix the paint.  Each student created their own unique turkey feather.  While the kids created their feathers, Anne made a large turkey for the bulletin board, and together they assembled it for a beautiful Thanksgiving display.

Student’s studying Cherokee life and culture made and decorated clay pinch and coil pots for display.  Anne Phillips provided students with images of ornamental and utilitarian Cherokee pots and provided written instructions as well as demonstrated basic techniques in the construction of both pinch and coil pots.  She gave students a softball size lump of clay to create their pots and provided them with pebbles, leaves, seeds, and other naturally found objects to make pressed imprints on their pots.  Students also carved designs and patterns to decorate their pots.  The finished pots were left to air dry and where displayed in the hallway in their very own Cherokee Museum.

Anne Phillips provided students with various pre-cut circles, triangles, rectangles, and squares in multiple colors and sizes to make a monster mash geometry lesson.  Students were given full sheets of colored paper and scissors to create their own monster shapes, and Anne showed them how changing the shape, position, and direction of their “monster eyes” changed the monster’s expression from happy to angry to silly.  They did the same exercise with shapes for the mouth.  Students were encouraged to get as creative as they wanted by adding hair, eye brows, ears, horns, eye lashes, etc.  Students were also given strips of paper and instructed how to make arms and legs using accordion folding techniques.

She passed out examples of beautifully creative maps that contained whales, compass roses, and other artistic details. Some maps were fantasy maps, like Harry Potter and Peter Pan’s Neverland. Other maps were accurate, artistic representations. She showed the students how to draw a simple compass rose and asked them to create their own world maps that contained the seven continents and four oceans.