So I know Pinterest is a black hole…and can be a bit of a temptation for teachers and often lead them down paths they maybe shouldn’t be led down. I was first drawn to Pinterest for recipes and home/craft projects – I am a very visual and like an image. Often an image is all I need to inspire, think and create from, so Pinterest was perfect for me…a visual collection of all my bookmarks of ideas from the internet. And then teaching ideas started appearing.

I have learned to be discerning on Pinterest and see it as a source of inspiration which leads me to my latest project. I saw a photo posted on Pinterest which I “pinned” to my block play board. At some point, I clicked on the link which led back to a mother’s project creating lovely colour blocks from dollar store materials. I tucked that somewhere away in my brain and when I was at a new Dollarama this week, I picked up these two materials:

With a glue gun, scissors and 20 minutes, I was able to make five lovely colour blocks to use in classrooms I visit. I’m going to put them up in the window in my office to capture the afternoon light and have colourful shadows cast in the room.

A quick project for $3.50 with enough colour transparency to make probably 10 more sets. These will also be great on the new light tables that all our schools are receiving this September.

And just because I had so many pieces of colourful dividers left, I bought some more blocks and made a slightly different version – thicker and more like little shadowboxes.

I think I am going to try some mactac with dried flowers, leaves etc next.

~Janice