Beaded Snowflakes

One of my student's favorite activities is making bracelets and necklaces with the bead stringing materials.  Periodically, the contents are changed by providing different beads, pipe cleaners, string, etc., depending on the class' topics of study, seasons, or holidays.  Inspired by ideas I found on Pinterest, I decided to provide the children with snowflake pipe cleaners for stringing beads.  As with most creations by the children, there is always a story behind their masterpiece.  To highlight this aspect of the activity, I thought it would be interesting to document the children's thoughts on their art work.

First, the children will gather the materials for creating their beaded snowflake:

Tray with snowflake pipe cleaners; assortment of beads; small tray for gathering beads.

Then, they will place the beads on the snowflake:

Beaded Snowflake

Lastly, the shape is stapled to black card stock and the children are asked if they would like to share their thoughts or make a story about their snowflake.  This will be recorded on the the white paper on the documentation page:

Beaded Snowflake documentation.

Not only do we begin to better understand the child, but we are also allowing them another opportunity to observe the action of writing.  I  also appreciate how the simple step of writing the child's thoughts and ideas brings an entirely new dimension to the child's work.