I love working with other teachers! I was talking with the art teacher and told her that I would be telling the story of The Nutcracker as a Story Listening lesson. She was inspired to do a project with the students!

Yesterday the 3rd & 4th graders started working on clothespin nutcrackers. I was too curious to stay away, so I popped in at the end of class. Boy, was so impressed! I also learned that they’d had an interesting discussion about nutcrackers, their origins, and asked questions like why are they all men?

Here are some pictures of their works-in-progress.

You can see some inspiration nutcrackers in the back. And they were even drawing nutcrackers on the white board!

They were so into the project that they will be working on it for one – maybe even two – more weeks! I am definitely going in next week to get in on the fun!

UPDATE:

Here are some more pictures of the finished nutcrackers! Click on the images to get a closer look.

On the top left, you can see the materials set out by the art teacher. Lots of choices! Obviously, the big guy in the back is a store-bought nutcracker 🙂  But look at the details in the ones the kids made. I love the soccer guy! So much creativity!