Making Thank You Cards Educational

We got several Donors Choose projects funded this winter/spring which is super exciting.  We got new sensory toys, reading/writing activities, printer paper, headphones, and more!  Part of the Donors Choose process is for the kids to make Thank You cards for the people who donated to the project.  This can be difficult in my class, since I have very few students who can write very easily.  But it is also a perfect, functional opportunity to target writing skills.  I have some kids working on everything from coloring in the lines, to tracing, copying words, copying sentences, and even others working on coming up with their own sentences.

Everyone's skills could be targeted through the simple act of making thank you cards.  I threw some simple clip art on the cards and the kids got to color and write.

Here are some students working on coloring.  For the picture on the right, I traced the outside of each petal in a different color and the student had to find the correct markers and color the petals.  For the picture on the left, the student colored independently.

Here is a student who was working on copying sentences and writing on the lines.

 I try and involve the students in this process as much as possible.  As we wrote the thank you cards, I had some of the actual items present so that my students could pick their favorite thing to write about.  This student is working on tracing letters currently, so for this card, he traced my writing.