The Frost School’s 2nd Grade Classroom Collections Project

Ideas about collections this year have sparked projects for PreK through adult audiences. Christine Jee and her second grade class at the Frost School in Lawrence embarked on a year-long Classroom Collections Project in September, exploring the personal and cultural value of collections and museums.

Each student has had an opportunity to be the Collector of the Week, bringing in his or her collection to prompt writing, drawing, and creating – and inspiring additional curriculum connections in math and social studies.

The following are excerpts from the newsletters published from documentation of the students’ work created by the students and Mrs. Jee.

“Our first collector of the week was Gleanys; she brought in her collection of 26 bouncy balls. Students sorted the balls by color and compared her balls to different planets and even to the swirly toothpaste that we use to brush our teeth. We were able to use the many balls during math, as we counted them by 2s and talked about place value by putting them in groups of tens and ones. Finally, we made up addition word problems since Katarina, Mrs. Jee, and Gleanys all brought in more balls to add to the collection of balls. 26 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 30.”

“Remember when Tyler brought in his museum-in-a-box and we got the idea to build our own museums? Well, almost all of the students in our class have brought in their collections by now and we are beginning to plan what it would be like if we had a B301 class collections museum.”

“Last week, Julie and Jamie from the Addison Gallery came into our class and gave us a slide presentation about the museum that they work in. Their museum has been closed to the public since they are working on making it bigger (otherwise we would have gone on a field trip to visit them by now!) and we got to learn about this project. We saw an architect’s rendering, blueprints, and pictures of the construction and talked about the art that the Addison Gallery collects.”

“This week, we will begin constructing a museum of our own. We will make blueprints of what we want the inside of our museum to look like and then build one large museum out of a cardboard box, representing the outside of our museum. Each student will also be in charge of designing and creating their own galleries..”

Mrs. Jee’s students will be showing their work to friends and family soon in a special school exhibition of their “Museum of Art and Other Cool Stuff,” including a celebration of the book of their explorations and process that they co-edited and self-published using blurb.com.


Posted by:

Jamie Kaplowitz
Education Fellow