Tuesday, January 03, 2017

Watch Us Grow! {A Monthly Activity}

August 12, 2013 I started this blog post. I'm not sure what happened and why I didn't share it. I've updated the product, added a little bit more and am finally hitting publish on this. I thought it would be fun to leave it as I had it a little over 3 years ago. Haha!

 So here it begins....

Last year I posted about Monthly Self-Portrait drawings I did with my students. Each month we would do Mat-Man by Handwriting Without Tears (kids love Mat-Man by the way, even if he does look like a monkey), and then we would draw a picture of ourselves. We would also write our name. A great way to show progress throughout the school year. These were some of my favorite items to look back on when the year ended.


When the 2012-2013 school year started I was working with a whole new group of students and an entirely different set of skills. Expecting them to be able to draw self-portraits was not developmentally appropriate. I just love these items at the end of the year though, so I knew I wanted to do something similiar.

I found this great product at the end of last year online and the light bulb turned on.

Teacher Created Resources® Mini Bulletin Board Set, Watch Us Grow

We would take a monthly picture of each student and see how tall they were. Then have the students write their names on the line. Just like our monthly self portraits, each page would be displayed on a bulletin board in the classroom. 


I used the small name tags that came with the bulletin board set and put under the green pages with student names on them. (Sorry that's not pictured)

Using the back of a bookshelf, I added bulletin board paper and made my own space for measuring student heights. I would have them stand there, get their height and THEN take the picture. Lots of wiggles happened between measuring and photos so I never relied on the measurements seen in the photos.

Each month we would display the new page on top of last months.

At the end of the year we bound them into books for the students to take home. It was so neat to see how much they grew throughout the year. They change so much at this age too! I wish I had taken a picture of the finished books this year. I guess I was too distracted by the fact that I put 2013-2014 on all of the covers instead of 2012-2013 so I had to re-do all of them....

...and there it ends.

In my first post reference above I shared about how we drew self portraits. That page includes a link to purchase our monthly self portrait pages. I went ahead an gave that pack a MUCH needed make over and also included pages for using photos and a growth chart if that's more suitable for your class.

You can purchase it in my TpT store, or re-download it if you already have it!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Watch-Me-Grow-Bundle-Editable-Covers-264094


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3 comments

Unknown said...

I love this idea! I do something similar in my classroom, but I take the kid's heights in August, December, and April on a large piece of butcher paper (not fancy haha). I color code the heights with a key for month and year. Since I have my kiddos for multiple years (I'm self-contained AU K-4), it's so fun to see where they started and how tall they are now! They are obsessed with looking and seeing how much taller they've gotten!

Erin Lukas said...

Kelly I love that! I too end up with students multiple years in a row and what a wonderful solution your idea is to that! :) K-4...wow, what a span!

Unknown said...

Haha yeah, it's both a blessing and a curse! I have to change it up every few years when kiddos leave, but I just re-draw heights for my current kids. The kids and parents love seeing it, and some kids have HUG jumps! I recommend it for every teacher!

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