Welcome Back!

1. Every time you meet new people, they might become your new friends, maybe even your best friend! Here’s a fun way to get to know classmates at the beginning of a new term or whenever any group starts. It all starts with a puzzle!
2. On a foam produce tray, etch five large puzzle pieces with the tip of a Crayola® Erasable Colored Pencil. Cut out the shapes with Crayola Scissors. Smooth the edges with sandpaper or an emery board.
3. Keep one of your pieces. Mix up the rest with pieces from four other students’ puzzles. Each person then takes four pieces. With Crayola Gel Markers, draw words or symbols of things that tell something about you on each piece. Draw pictures of your hobbies, sports, or pets, for example.
4. Get back together and fit your pieces into puzzles. Introduce yourselves, talk about the things you have in common, and find out what makes each of you unique!

LA: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade level topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.

LA: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

SS: Describe ways in which language, stories, folktales, music, and artistic creations serve as expressions of culture and influence behavior of people living in a particular culture.

SS: Identify roles as learned behavior patterns in group situations such as student, family member, peer play group member, or club member.

VA: Know how the differences among visual characteristics and purposes of art in order to convey ideas.

VA: Select and use subject matter, symbols, and ideas to communicate meaning.

Adapt the puzzle-making activity for other activities such as learning addition or multiplication facts. Students select an algorithm to practice, write the solution on a puzzle piece, and identify two addends, or factors that result in this solution. Instead of a digit solution, students can use a symbol and repeat it several times to illustrate the solution, such as 4=four flowers.

Encourage students to create Crayola Model Magic tiles using symbols that represent their interests and/or talents. Organize the completed tiles into a class mosaic and display them in the classroom.