This activity involves creating a gift for a parent or another adult in the child's life. The gift -- a notepad with pages for all four seasons of the year -- involves a technology component that can be done easily in a classroom computer center or the school computer lab.
saving a copy to your classroom computers' hard drive for students to use,
saving it to a disk that students can use, or
creating a copy for each child on disk(s) or hard drive.
If students need to save the file so they can work on it, instruct them how to do that and where to save it. Once they have their "working copy" of the template they need to type into the four empty fields -- one in each seasonal square of the template -- the name of the person to whom they will present the gift notepad. So the message at the top of the four squares might read…
From the Desk of...
Jane Smith
or
From the Desk of...
Uncle Matt
or
From the Desk of...
Mrs. Brown
or…
Once students have filled in all four fields on the notepad template and saved the file to the disk or computer hard drive, the notepads are ready to print. They might be printed in black & white or color. Print three copies of the document for each student.
When students have their printed pages, they need to use scissors to carefully cut each sheet along the dotted lines. When cut, each sheet will yield four sections, one for each season of the year.
Next, students arrange their cut pages so that all of the quarter-sheet notes for each season are together. Place the note sheets for the current season on top, the note sheets for the season to follow directly below, and so on.
If this is a Christmas gift, the winter notepad pages will appear on top (for students in the Northern Hemisphere), followed by spring, summer, and fall. If the gift is for Mother's Day, the spring pages will appear on top followed by summer, fall, and winter…
When the notepad sheets are in sequence, package the notepad pages by stapling in two places at the top; the staples will need to go through all 12 sheets of the notepad. If you wish to make larger notepads you can punch two spaced holes in the top of the notepad pages and string ribbon or yarn through the holes to hold together the notepad's pages.
Assessment
Did students follow directions for using the computer and putting together their notepad gifts?
Lesson Plan Source
EducationWorld.com
Submitted By
Gary Hopkins
National Standards
TECHNOLOGY GRADES K - 12 NT.K-12.1 Basic Operations and Concepts
FINE ARTS: Visual Arts GRADES 5 - 8 NA-VA.5-8.1 Understanding and Applying Media, Techniques,
and Processes NA-VA.5-8.3 Choosing and Evaluating A Range of Subject
Matter, Symbols, and Ideas GRADES 9 - 12 NA-VA.9-12.1 Understanding and Applying Media, Techniques,
and Processes NA-VA.9-12.3 Choosing and Evaluating A Range of Subject
Matter, Symbols, and Ideas
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Seasonal Notepad Gift