Career Day Ideas:
Are you looking for Career Day Writing Activities for Elementary Students? If so, this writing craft will surely be a hit in your classroom.
I’m all about writing, art, and showing off our work! These little art projects are super duper cute on the outside of your classroom or hanging inside for all to see! This project takes a bit of prep work, but it’s SOOOOO worth it in the end!
Career Activity: How to Set up, You Ask??
OK – so, because this comes in several different pieces, we found that the best way to organize was to create a binder with sheet protectors. We only needed one binder for my entire team – and then we just shared the binder throughout the week.
The first thing we do is read several different books about community helpers and allow time for student discussion. I also asked parents to talk to their child about some possibilities. After several days of discussion, it was then time to start the process of our activity.
Each student has a writing folder, so once they decided on what they wanted to be, I took my binder to the copier, and made copies of what I needed. I used a sticky note and put it on top of the sheet protector to say how many I needed. (Example: all of the “Veterinarian” pieces were in one sheet protector – so if I had 3 kids that wanted to be a Veterinarian, then I had 3 on that sticky, with their names…)
As I copied, (and I actually copied the writing section twice – because they are first graders… and well – I’d rather have an extra copy, than not in case of mistakes.) Then I wrote their name on the top page and stapled their section together. We then placed their entire packet into their red writing folder.
Now we were ready to begin!
Here’s the finished project. CUTE RIGHT?
Your choice of what you do first, but…
So, obviously it’s your decision on how you guys work, but we did the writing part first! As we all know, some kiddos are really fast at completing, but some… take their time. And that’s perfect! All my kids were working at different paces, and it was nice that once they were done, they were able to go straight to the coloring part without my help, since I was still working with students on the writing part.
This was done in many steps, as not only do they write and color, but then they needed to cut out everything, and then glue. No matter where they were in the process, we kept everything in our red folder. Now – to be honest… I had a few students who I KNEW would lose pieces, so for those kiddos, I actually put their items in a zip lock and then in their folder.
GLUEING
To be completely honest with you, I’m a bit OCD. Even though I KNOW I should have let them glue their community helper all by themselves, I just can’t seem to allow that to happen. So, as they finished, they came up to my guided reading table, and we did it together. I let them put the glue, and start to place the images, but I also helped if it wasn’t quite lined up! I know…but I just can’t help it! Dot Dot Not A Lot – becomes, “Here – let Mrs. Juneau help a little bit!”
STEP BY STEP
- Print all of the pages and put in sheet protectors. If you don’t want to do it this way, there’s also a LINKED TABLE OF CONTENTS page.
- Read books and discuss different jobs with students.
- Then have students pick what they want to be when they grow up.
- As they pick, put sticky note on that job so you know how many to print (example: Sarah, Johnny, and Claire want to be teachers – so you would put a sticky note on the teacher sheet protector with those three names, so you know to print three teacher packets)
- Print, staple, and write student name on each packet
- Put the stapled sheets in their writing folder
Continued:
- Have students write first, then cut out the booklet (or you can cut out using paper cutter)
- Students will write their name on the first page, then complete the last three pages of the booklet. This takes about two or three days depending on how much time you have in your writing block. I would put sticky notes on their desk, and if they needed to know how to spell certain words, I would walk around and write those words – but also encouraging them to try to spell it out with their sounds if I thought they could.
- Once they were done with their booklet, I would staple the book and then students would move on to coloring their person and then cutting out their person.
- Every student finished at different times, so this really became a three-step process. I had some that were still working on their writing, while others were coloring, and others were finished and they would be gluing the finished product onto the big piece of construction paper.
TIPS:
- Keep everything in a writing folder (I didn’t do that the first year, and it was a hot mess)
- Have students write their name on each sheet.
- Don’t have them cut out the writing parts of the booklet until they are finished (much easier to keep things organized this way)
- When they cut out their person, have them write their name on the back of each image
- I used my paper cutter to cut the top and bottom of the image so that it lined up perfectly when gluing onto big piece of construction paper
Over The Years…
I started out with about 40 options, but obviously it got out of control for me! Students wanted all different kinds of careers, and once I put it as a resource on TPT – the options grew even more so. Check out my resource HERE, to see all of the options available to you!
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Career Activity: WHAT OTHER’S THOUGHT ABOUT THIS RESOURCE…
These were a hit with my students! The available career choices blew me away. You thought of everything. We put our finished products on display in our hallway, and received so many compliments from students and staff. Thanks for such an awesome product!
Great way to expose my students to a variety of careers and prepare them for career day!
Great resource! Have been using this for the past few years and the students enjoy creating their book and putting together their projects!
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