Binary Holiday Ornaments

The students in grade 3 and 4 learned about binary, bits, and bytes in December.  In addition, each student learned to write his/her name in binary numbers as well as a holiday word!

Then the students took the holiday/winter word and strung beads to represent the O and 1s. 

The idea came from this awesome blog - Little Bins for Little Hands.

I created a SWAY (version of power point with 2 videos, the project, and over 45 holiday words)
BINARY SWAY.

Half the students did the learning and writing name/holiday word in binary in one lesson and the second lesson was the beads.

The other half due to snow delays had to do the lesson in one class period.  This was rushed and less effective (and less fun).

Here are some pictures of the students at work and some final projects!

Pros - learn new computer terms, learn how to write binary, put together technology and art
Cons - beads, beads, beads - keeping color separated during clean up was a challenge

Take aways and changes for next year:
Tables for students to work on with beads in the center to choose from
More time to do the project (stretch to 3 weeks?)
Plan for students who missed part 1 to catch them up easier
Pre-buy beads in bulk - 200 students used about 6000 beads - colors on the last day were limited!