Fortune Teller Craziness

One of our makerspaces this week is fortune tellers--you know the ones that look like little egg carton designs with numbers and symbols and "fortunes" that you write in to tell people what is going to happen in their lives. I write things like "You are always going to be surrounded by good friends." The kids LOVED this makerspace. When my first group of third graders came, they loved it so much that I had to spend a considerable amount of time there helping. The crowd around the table was too big and had to expand to three other tables. I decided that for the future classes I would show them, as a class, how to fold the fortune teller. I even grabbed the children's book The Fortune Tellers by Lloyd Alexander with illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman.

I briefly booktalked the book and then we folded the fortune teller together. Most of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders could do this pretty easily. It was an opportunity for some students to be helpers with struggling students. They all LOVED it!! After the folding was done, I told them that they could check out books and finish the writing portion of the fortune tellers at one of the makerspaces set up with colored pens, markers, and such. Usually different kids choose various stations but yesterday they all wanted to finish their fortune tellers. It was such a surprise to me how much they loved this project. Yay!! Below is a screenshot of some folding instructions that came from Wikipedia. There are also some pics I took of my own "model" fortune teller.