Embark on an exciting journey to create adorable paper craft hippopotamuses with your students or children! This engaging activity will not only help your little learners practice their fine motor and cutting skills, but also provided a fantastic opportunity to review the letter "H" and introduce informational text writing. Let’s dive into how this craft became a holistic learning experience!
Fine Motor Skills Development
- use scissors and paper to color and cut various shapes to assemble your hippos
- paper crafts are ideal for developing fine motor skills, allowing children to strengthen their hand-eye coordination and dexterity
- watch your students confidence grow as they master the art of cutting and creating
Letter H Review
- as part of your activity, review of the letter h
- your students can practice writing uppercase and lowercase "H" on their hippo cutouts or on a whiteboard
- discuss words that start with "h," such as hippo, happy, and house
- write some h words on cards and use them in a bulletin board display along with your students crafts
Informational Text Writing
- once the crafts are complete, channel your students creativity into writing
- each student can write a few sentences about hippos, sharing fun facts they learned during our discussion or class reading of a book or website
- my printable pack includes writing scaffolds you can use
- help stduents understand the structure of informational text and how it allows them to express their knowledge in writing
- model the use of clear and simple sentences while encouraging them to illustrate their work by completing one together as a class collaborative writing project (perhaps the day before students write independently)
Collaboration and Classroom Display
- after completing a hippo craft and writing, let the real magic happen
- collaborate as a class to organize your beautiful creations into a vibrant bulletin board display
- students can work together to plan the layout, demonstrating teamwork and organizational skills with a stunning showcase of creativity and learning
Showcasing Student Work
Your classroom bulletin board can not only highlighted the students' crafts but also display their writing alongside the colorful hippos. This visual representation of their hard work may instil a sense of pride in each student and foster a love for learning through creativity!
To add a whimsical touch to your display, here are some catchy bulletin board title ideas:
- “Hippopotamus Happenings!”
- “Hippo-ly Awesome Work!”
- “Hooray for Hippos!”
Keep creativity flowing in your classroom with craft and writing!