"About Me" Puzzle

When I was first placed in second grade during my Methods I class, I was given the challenge to create a unique way to tell my new students about myself that did not include a traditional poster. I love crafting things, so this assignment was no problem for me; I actually enjoyed it! I found a wooden tile board in the craft section of WalMart, and I instantly knew that I was going to use it to make an "About Me" puzzle!

Source

Once I purchased the board, I colored each of the tiles in one of my three favorite colors: pink, purple, or blue. Once the paint dried on those, I began printing out pictures and other things that I could use to layer on top of the tiles to tell my story. I found pictures online, purchased scrapbook stickers, and printed out my own personal pictures!

I cut out all of my pictures and glued them to various pieces of scrapbook paper as a way to "dress them up" before adding them to my board. Once those had dried, I covered each tile with glossy Mod Podge to set the pictures so that students couldn't pull them off or damage them while using the puzzle.

Next, I wanted to find a way to have the puzzle pieces "stick" to the board so that when I held it up to present it to my class, the pieces wouldn't be falling out everywhere! I found these little round magnets at WalMart, which I hot glued to the back of each wooden tile. I put one on the top and one on the bottom of each tile so they would be balanced and sit flush against the board once they were finished. I realized that I needed galvanized metal in order to make my wooden tile pieces stick to the magnets. Luckily, my dad has a workshop in the house, so he was able to cut little pieces of the metal for me to hot glue on the wooden board.

The point of using sliding tiles as a puzzle for this project was so that students could use it as a memory game. After I hot glued all of the pieces of metal to the board, I came up with little clues that I could write on the board for students to figure out when trying to put the puzzle back together.

I introduced my "About Me" puzzle to the class, removing each tile from the puzzle and passing it around the circle for students to get a closer look. I explained to the students that underneath each puzzle piece was a hint, so that if they wanted to, they could take all of the pieces off and try to put them back together again in the correct order according to the hints.

Unfortunately, I lost the pictures I took of the board when I had first made it. 

Some of the metal pieces on the board fell off due to students playing with it! 

Some days during snack time, students would come up to me and say, "Miss Preston! I took apart and put together your puzzle three times today!" Many of the students would come up to me and start talking about Despicable Me, since they knew that was my favorite animated movie. The puzzle board was a huge success because students were able to get to know me; they found things about me that they could relate to; and they even worked on their motor skills because it took effort to put the magnetic pieces on the metal strips in just the right way.

This was my favorite way to tell students about myself, and I'll definitely be doing more projects like this for my future classes!