Folding 1,000 Origami Cranes

One of my favorite projects that I have ever done with students is when we fold and string 1,000 origami cranes.

 Emma P. holds one of her strands of bitty birds.

 Hannah S. and Emilie F. work together on stringing their birds.

 Josh M. with his brother's strands. (His brother was ill.) Seth V. in the back.

Today my student teacher will help me hang them all - the classroom will be so beautiful!

A Day Brightens

Running off to Florida for Braden's baptism was wonderful and I wouldn't have missed it for anything. But, the downside is that it takes me quite a while to catch up on the grading that builds up while I am gone.

So, Wednesday after school, I planned a grading marathon.

 Morosely I stared at the stacks of books when the bell rang at 3:30 and the children left.

 Vocabulary books, Greek/Latin workbooks, journal entries, science binders... it was an overwhelming task. I sat down with a grading pen and got to work.

Around 5:00 I looked up as someone walked by my window. That's not too unusual - there are baseball fields next to the school and often in the spring and fall there are games or practices happening. But this person had stopped at my window and was waving at me.

It was Mrs. Smith! I'd had both her daughters, Lauren and Erin, and she is a huge supporter of public education. She began the TSC Save Our Schools campaign, and had had me recognized by the Public Schools Foundation of Tippecanoe County last February.

She'd also attended a fundraiser last Sunday in downtown Lafayette and had again honored me, sending me this picture from the PSFTC Facebook page.

Quickly I went over and opened the window, and discovered that Mrs. Smith was not alone - her daughter Erin was with her. I invited them to come in the building and have a chat.

Erin is now as tall as me!!

Erin told me she had a gift for me and handed me a box. Inside was a lovely pair of origami crane earrings, something she knew I would love because of the crane project we do every other year. But there was a story behind the gift, a big one.

Over the summer, the Smiths had gone to Hawaii and visited the Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes museum. A tribute to Sadako, a real Japanese girl who attempted to fold 1,000 paper cranes while ill with radiation poisoning from the Hiroshima bomb, the story is a part of our class curriculum. It is a moving one, as Sadako dies before accomplishing her task, and her classmates finish it for her in her memory. There is a Sadako memorial in Japan and one in Hawaii.

While in the museum gift shop, the Smiths saw the origami crane earrings and decided to buy them for me as a gift. 

Their visit brightened my day and distracted me from my heavy grading load. But even better, I saw the power of a book in action, one that influenced Erin so much that she visited a museum about that book while on vacation and then took a further step of thinking of me and bringing me back a very special gift.

Flying High!

My class slogan, coined in 2007 by Jake Fernung for the first 4/5 multiage class, is "Flying high with Mrs. I." ("I" is SUCH a good letter to have for your name - you can do so much with it!) 

And right now, origami cranes are what are flying high in our room. The kids have folded 1,100 plus peace cranes, and then strung them as part of our unit on Conflict. A parent volunteer came in this afternoon after school to help me hang them all.

 Aren't they lovely?

These strands are up permanently. The cranes are all by former students who have folded them and then sent them to me as a gift. I have them hung in the corner by my desk, and they mean a great deal to me. Most of them are signed by the kiddos who made them.

I do this project every two years, so this is the fourth time I have cycled through it. Thinking of the four strands from past students, I decided that this time I would ask the kids to each make me a crane. Those will be strung and then hung with the former students' cranes. Ideally, I'd like to add a string every two years until I retire.

Another view of the classroom and the origami cranes.

More Thoughtful Former Students

It happened again, only with a different group of former students. When I arrived at school this morning, this was waiting for me:

Kamryn, Kathleen, and Lexie left me a nice surprise.

Thoughtful Former Students

The R girls - some of my all time favorite students. Both were in the 2/3 my first year at Hershey, and both moved up to the 4/5. Lucky me - three years with these sisters.

(When I first met them, Merry, the 2nd grader announced, "I can be grumpy!" when I asked her to tell me about herself. "Oh, surely not!" I said, looking down at that sweet little face. I turned to look at her  older sister, Madeline, who had raised her eyebrows and was nodding sagely. "Oh, yes, she can!" she declared. But, in all our years together, I never, ever saw Merry grumpy.)

Merry sent me an email Thursday night. "Look around your door in the morning - elves came!" They sure had - those "elves" had decorated my classroom door! When? My guess was the previous evening during the Hershey Choir party. The girls' brother is still at Hershey and sings in the choir.

 Shades of many years ago when those girls helped our class make 1,000 paper cranes!

 Merry and Madeline made four out of gum wrappers. (So, the two of them and their parents all must've been chewing gum while their brother sang.)

 Two were on my Zeus welcome plaque. The larger crane says, "I miss you, Mrs. I. Love, Meredith."

Another two, also made out of the program from the evening were on my mailbox. "We flew high with Mrs. I...  Madeline" is written on the larger one.

Is it any wonder that I love these girls? Rather, these young women who are in 8th and 9th grade and yet still check in occasionally?

Camera Case Surprise

I got an email from Mrs. B. this morning. Her son, CB, is a 5th grader in my class. She wrote, "As I was prepping the camera for the talent show today, look what I found in the case! :)"

And attached to the email was this photo:

That's ten or eleven origami cranes. Yep, the kids are STILL making them out of every scrap of paper, napkin, or gum wrapper they can find!

I wonder why on earth he squirreled them away in the camera case!

Reaction Art Museum

In addition to folding 1,000 origami cranes during our Conflict unit, we study US history through global, national, local, and personal conflicts. I show them some great works of art (Picasso's Guernica, Mya Lin's Vietnam War memorial, The Wall, great works of music and literature, etc.) We discuss how good things can come from bad as an artist, author, or composer reacts to a conflict.

And then I ask them to react to any conflict of their choice and express it as art, music, or literature. We open the classroom for a day to the school, family, and friends and have a Reaction Art Museum.

This year's offerings were tremendous and we spent a lovely day sharing our art work with 300+ people.

 AQ's egg was one of my favorites. He is intrigued by eggs as a shape as well as a symbol in our culture, and so his artwork reflected that interest. His egg was the 13 Colonies (the yolk) enveloped by Britain (the white) and the Revolutionary War breaking them apart (the fork.) Fascinating!

 CB wrote a limerick. Behind him is CP's "World Wide Web" - a globe with pins marking areas of conflict in our world. Those were connected with string to show how interconnected conflict can be.

 NN did a scene of Japan after the atom bomb and LW did World War II as well.

 I love how our cranes are so colorful and add to the atmosphere of the museum! AP shows her golden horse statue that she sculpted.

 KH did a painting. Green dots stood for the number of soldiers killed in battle.

 NC did a three panel display concerning the Twin Towers and 911.

 NN shows Mr. Thoennes his entry.

 JT's art was deceptively simple. The third cloverleaf is covered in real clovers which have been painted and glittered. His entry is about the conflicting feelings of being different.

 EB has strong Tea Party feelings so he painted a picture of the American flag being strangled by a big green, grasping hand.

 A shot that shows just how full the room was! (Again, I love how the cranes brighten the room!)

The children dressed up for the event. JM even wore a suit!

LT made a quilt that reflected her feelings about having been bullied.

1,000 Origami Cranes

We folded 1,000 origami cranes this year as part of our Conflict Unit. Here are some snaps of the kiddos folding, stringing, and hanging.

LT threads her needle with fishing line.

Most children are done folding and now stringing. Each child had to make 35 cranes in order for us to have 1000.

A close-up of a child threading the needle.

DC holds up strands of cranes ready to be hung in our classroom.

Tim Schnepp, aide to the 5th grade teachers, did the hanging for me. I can climb a ladder, but I am still very slow and it does hurt somewhat, so he offered to do it for me.

This project sure involved the whole class!

We also folded "pterodactyls" - cranes made from 3' x3' paper. Mr. Toll's class decorated theirs with a message of world peace.