This is great activity to spread over the months of a school year. Guest teacher author, Aoife, shares her approach to this effective and fun way to develop home and school links.
For this simple project, you will need a cuddly teddy, an empty scrapbook and the printables provided below. This project is most suitable for Infants, but can definitely be used in First and Second Class and is best started early in the school year.
A Take Home Teddy Project is a fantastic way to develop pupils skills across the curriculum.
- You can have a class vote to choose teddy’s name!
- Children will work on their literacy skills when completing their entry.
- They will develop oral language skills when presenting their diary entry to the class.
- Builds collaboration in the classroom.
- Helps foster positive home school links.
- Children can develop their self esteem and confidence, while building their understanding of themselves and the wider world.
Informing parents
You can use a letter at the front of your scrapbook to explain the project to the parents.
Dear Parents/Guardians,
Welcome to Ted’s Diary. Ted is our class mascot! He is a cuddly, friendly guy who loves to go on adventures. When your child has Ted at home for his visit, please include him in all family activities. He loves to sit at the table at mealtimes, play games, make things and play outside.
At the end of Ted’s time with your family, please help your child to write/draw about his/her time with Ted on the sheets provided with this scrapbook. You can stick in a photo of your adventure if you wish!
Thank you for supporting us with this collaborative class project.
Here is an editable (MS Word doc) example of a letter you can use.
Here are some additional writing frame templates (PDF) you can print and put in the scrapbook to help your young diarists capture their ideas.
How long should children keep the teddy?
It is up to you to decide how long each child has the class mascot for. Two or three nights work well and gives families a chance to do something fun, take some photos or stick in a picture and fill in their diary entry.
If Teddy joins the class on trips out and attends special events like sports days, the class can add some “special event” pages to the scrapbook too.
When you keep this scrapbook in the class library, the children will come back to it again and again to read about Ted’s adventures and look at the pictures. At the end of the year, you can pick one lucky pupil who gets to keep Ted’s diary!
There is so much to be gained across the curriculum from a project like this and it literally runs itself. So go on, give a Teddy Diary a shot!
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