Ms. Purdy's Classroom Edit display name

Current requests

Past projects 16

• Crafting Joy for the Holidays, With No Bake Cookie Houses!

  Funded Oct 31, 2024

  You are so awesome for being there for my wonderful students! Making these Cookie cottages was such an amazing and fun project for them, and such a great way to end the Fall semester and celebrate the holiday season. Truly, my students loved every single minute of it! From planning their house, to measuring meringue powder and making the royal icing with our stand mixer, to decorating with candy -it brought joy and collaboration and community into our classroom!

  I simply cannot thank you enough! But I hope you all know how special you are and how deeply we all appreciate the support and funding!”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Purdy

  This classroom project was brought to life by The DonorsChoose Community & an Anonymous Partner and 4 other donors.

• Creating Calmness And Roses, One Petal At A Time!

  Funded Feb 14, 2025

  You are SO AWESOME!! I will try my best to express the amount of thankfulness I feel for your generosity... it is HUMONGOUS!!! My students will love creating duct tape roses.... and calmness and peace will envelope our classroom, for awhile! But since crafting has been proven to positively affect mental health- your donation has long term benefits as well! Thank you again for caring about the futures of my students and providing for them-YOU ROCK!”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Purdy

  This classroom project was brought to life by Olga Graham Inspiring Teachers Fund and one other donor.

• Scissors That Cut It!

  Funded Aug 15, 2024

  I cannot thank you enough for funding my project "Scissors That Cut It!" Your donation truly helped my school year get off to a great start, providing my students with materials that were a joy to use, and enabling my students to create beautiful artwork within the first couple of months of school.

  After a decade with the same set of scissors, I was in desperate need of new scissors as my last set had dulled despite frequent sharpening. With these new scissors, my students crafted with ease, learning how fun-and useful- it can be to create Pom Pom bookmarks. They sculpted with our new scissors for 30 minutes, snipping, shaping and observing in 3 dimension to create magnificent orbs, all the while having so much fun! Many made multiple pom poms and tied them onto their backpacks for decoration. They also used their pom poms to decorate their Ojo de Dios, the project that followed the pom poms, and that required yarn, tree branches and a good pair of scissors.

  Thank you again for providing these scissors to my students! They are truly a joy to hold and craft with, and I know they will be put to great use for many years to come!”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Purdy

  This classroom project was brought to life by The Gates Foundation and 2 other donors.

• Fun With Folding: Learning Financial Literacy With Origami!

  Funded Oct 28, 2024

  Your support is deeply appreciated, and I thank you with all my heart for helping to make this project happen! I truly can't thank you enough for your contributions that will help my students learn origami and financial literacy at the same time. I know how valuable this project will be for my students and I cannot wait to begin!”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Purdy

  This classroom project was brought to life by United Airlines and 2 other donors.

• Compassion Campaign: Spread Kindness Everywhere!

  Funded Aug 31, 2024

  It is with my deepest thanks that I write to you all this evening. I want you to know how much your support means to me and to all of my new students this year! They are a great bunch, and I am so looking forward to working with them on this Compassion Campaign, and spreading more kindness everyday throughout our school community!”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Purdy

  This classroom project was brought to life by The Compassion Project and 3 other donors.

• Drawn Into Nature!

  Funded Sep 12, 2023

  As I reflect on the end of this school year–all of the successes and some of the difficult challenges I faced, I am struck by the healing power that the 'Drawn To Nature' project brought to my classroom. When I had the idea for the Nature Journals project last summer, after a particularly rough school year–the toughest one I'd had since my first year as a teacher!–I hoped that by bringing more nature into my urban classroom I could offer healing to my students in these challenging times. And I am happy to say, what I hoped would happen, happened!

  Nature offered us an entryway and a bond. We more easily interacted and connected to each other through our interest of the animal world and appreciation of the beauty found in natural landscapes. Students loved going on a Scavenger Hunt, exploring their campus, to look for evidence of animal habitat and to find pollinators, like hummingbirds. Throughout the year, students created beautiful images of California native and endangered animals in their Nature Journals, and shared stories and facts with each other about what they learned through research and exploration. I sincerely believe these nature activities made our classroom environment kinder, because of our shared experiences and "discovered" connections to the natural world.

  Thank you again, my amazing donors, for your incredible generosity! I appreciate each and everyone of you for bringing more nature into my urban classroom this year for my students. Truly, this was such a successful project and so helpful to students mental health and well being, that I am already building upon the Nature Journal project for next year, experimenting and creating more lessons and activities.”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Purdy

  This classroom project was brought to life by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and 11 other donors.

• Zoom 4 Art!

  Funded Apr 13, 2021

  Thank you from the bottom of my heart for funding the MacBook Pro for my classroom! When it arrived in late April 2021, I did not have a working computer in my classroom. I had tried to secure one for over a year until I finally resorted to bringing in my own personal computer. Once I had a dedicated classroom computer, thanks to your kindness and generosity, I was truly able to start rebuilding the technology in my classroom that had been fractured in the midst of all the challenges COVID 19.

  I am truly grateful for your donation that enabled me to Zoom 4 Art! With your help, I was given access to much needed technology in the classroom to reach my students. I will be forever thankful for your support during this extraordinary time of teaching online during a pandemic!”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Purdy

  This classroom project was brought to life by IF/THEN, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies and one other donor.

• Making Friends with Origami While Making New Friends!

  Funded Sep 2, 2020

  I have so much gratitude in my heart for you all for giving to " Making Friends With Origami While Making New Friends!" my first big project of Distance Learning. As you can imagine, this school year - so far all online- has been unlike any I have ever experienced in my twenty years as an arts educator. I never dreamed it was possible to make real human connections with students I have never met -much less to teach a hands on skills like origami - and to see so many of my students excel as much online as if we were in the classroom! But, let me tell you, my wonderful donors, it is possible, and our origami project, that you helped bring to life, was a HUGE success!

  Your generous donation ensured that my 200 students were able to learn the ancient craft of origami with REAL origami paper, which is a square shape, and much thinner than the paper most people have in their house, so it is a lot easier to fold. Many students progressed from beginners at origami to advanced learners in about five weeks, creating complex modular origami with Sonobe modules that fit together like the pieces of a puzzle! Some students became so entranced with the magic of origami, that after they completed the week's assignment, they researched the internet to to find their own models to make, and proudly sent me videos of the work. Others, when assigned one model, demonstrated mastery of it by creating a collection or series, like the Secret Letter, or the Magic Star. Another great success of the project was just how many kids turned on their cameras during Zoom class, because they were so proud of their origami creations, and wanted to show me and their classmates on Zoom.

  I wish I could share with you all the exceptional work and videos I received of my students smiling with their origami models! (Some kids made over 20 models!) My hope is that you know from this letter how many lives you have touched, and the happiness you have brought to my students during these challenging times!”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Purdy

  This classroom project was brought to life by Kleenex® Brand and 6 other donors.

• Dream It, Design It, Duct Tape It!

  Funded Jan 8, 2019

  The duct tape project you generously helped to fund, was my last "big" project of the year, and it was truly a giant success! Making duct tape crafts is the absolute PERFECT project to do at the end of the year in middle school, when some students have summer on the brain, or when 8th graders, get a form of "senioritus" during the last several weeks of school, and just check out. Happily in my class, because of you, my incredible donors, and because of the fun and challenging projects I teach in Design Crafts, it is very rare to have a student who is not enjoying learning and crafting right up until the very last class of the year!

  Right away, my students became entranced with the process of crafting roses from duct tape. My classroom became curiously quiet (that's hard to make happen with 42 kids at the end of the year!) Many said again and again, how calming and relaxing it was to make roses out of duct tape, something they initially could not even believe was possible! They learned to create two different types of duct tape roses - a realistic rose and a pointed tip rose - right in time for Mother's Day - and it was fun to hear them profess which type of rose and technique for crafting the petals, was their favorite. They also learned how to create a sheet of duct tape that looks like a thick, waterproof piece of fabric, which is the foundation for making a wallet, and many other things, like purses, backpacks, and even clothes! Lastly, they made a paper model of a wallet; then created that custom design out of just duct tape!

  Once again, this end of the year duct tape project was beloved by my students and is an experience they will never forget! Each of my five Design Crafts classes hungrily devoured their share of bright, colorful, shiny and patterned tape and learned how to create beauty out of something so ordinary and unexpected. I am truly thankful for the happiness you brought to my classroom and my students!”

  With gratitude,

  Ms. Purdy