Your green pages: 75 specific skill-building activities you can use right now!

Teaching Pre K-8, Nov/Dec 1999

Pre-K Through 1.6

WHITE FLAKES

1

SCIENCE: Display pictures of snow scenes. Help the children identify and describe the snow. Introduce facts about snow. Then, read the following poem to the children:

What Snow Does

Just like a huge, soft blanket,

It covers all in sight

And what once was so colorful

Has now been turned pure white.

Beneath that huge, white blanket

Are outlines of what was.

But nothing looks like what it should

For that is what snow does.

by Martin Shaw

Guide the children in recalling what snow does.

TURKEY TALK

2

LANGUAGE ARTS: Display a picture of a turkey. The children identify and describe it. Invite them to imagine that the turkey can talk and tell what it might say. On displayed chart paper, list their responses in sentences. Help the child and then the class "read" his or her response. Cut the chart apart into sentences. The children take them home.

BELL RINGING

3

MATH: Give each child a cardboard bell shape. Lead the children in dramatizing ringing their bells. Assemble the children in small groups. The group members stand side by side. Lead one group in ringing their bells to the count one, two, three. Then, each of the other groups takes a turn. Continue the activity counting to four and so on.

BY ORDER

4

MATH: On a table, in a row, place five boxes wrapped in different gift papers. Help the children describe the boxes. Then, point to the boxes in left-toright order saying, "First, second," etc.

Lead the children in naming the order as you point again. Describe each box randomly. The children tell its order.

SHAPES AND SHAPES

5

ART: Give the children construction paper ornament shapes of different colors. On oaktag, the child pastes the shapes, overlapping them. Using a circular cookie cutter dipped in black liquid tempera paint, the child stamps circles on the ornaments. Display the shape pictures.

FRIENDSHIP

6

Read Ruby the Christmas Donkey by Mirabel Cecil (Candlewick, 1999). Read the title to the child. Help him or her brainstorm why the donkey is called the Christmas donkey. With the child, turn the pages as you read the story aloud. Then, the child tells the part(s) of the story that he or she likes best.

FAMILY PICK

7

PERCEPTION: Read the following poem to the children:

My Family

"My family is fun, " says Jan with a smile,

"My family, " says Chris,

"likes to run a mile. "

"My family is proud, " says Carol,

"of all they can learn.,,

"My family works together, " says Don, taking a turn.

"My family loves to travel, " says Kim,

"so much to see. "

"Families are great!"

they all cheer and agree.

by Virginia S Brown

Display pictures of families. Read the first line of the poem aloud. The children tell which pictured family could be the one you read about. Probe for reasons for their selection. In like manner, continue the activity.

THE VISITOR'S LETTER

8

LANGUAGE ARTS: Read the following I poem to the children:

Santa's Visit

He came to our house

in the middle of the night

He sat in Mom's chair

and wrote us a letter

While eating all of the cookies bite by bite.

He wrote his apology

for fewer gifts this year,

He wrote that next year

he'd make it all right

Next morning, we read his letter and opened our gifts.

We said, Santa'll do better

next Christmas Eve night "

by Virginia S Brown

On chart paper, write Santa's letter to a family using the children's ideas of what he might have written. Read the letter to the children. Then, help them "read" it.

SWING WITH RUDOLPH

9

MOTOR COORDINATION: The children form a circle and join hands. They swing their arms forward and backward as you tap a rhythm. Then, play the music "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." The children swing their arms back and forth to the rhythm. Do the activity with the children performing on every other line of the song and singing the lines in between the lines performed.

WORD READ

10

LANGUAGE ARTS: Help your child find and cut out pictures of items associated with Chanukah, Christmas and Kwanzaa. Spread the pictures on a table. Below each, place a cardboard strip containing the name of the item. Help your child identify each picture and "read" the name. Call out the name of a picture. Your child points to the picture and to the name while "reading" it.

TRIM A TREE

11

ART: Give the children green paper triangles of different sizes.

GIFT GIVING

12

SOCIAL STUDIES: With the children, brainstorm why people give gifts at Christmas time, Help them consider other occasions when gifts are given.

Ask when and why they or their families give gifts. Probe for identification and description of the gifts that they might give.

Grade 1.0 Through Grade-2-.6----

HOME GROUP

13

SOCIAL STUDIES: Read "My Family" to the children (see- Activity 7).

Ask if their families are like any of those in the poem. Probe for reasons why. Invite individuals to tell about their families. Ask what makes their families special.

BY TWOS

14

MATH: Give each of five children two small ornaments on separate strings. They stand in a line in front of the class, showing their ornaments. Point to each child in line. The class tells how many ornaments the child has. The first child in line places his or her ornaments side by side on the table. Lead the class in saying two. The next child places two ornaments on the table about three inches from the first two ornaments. Lead the children in counting two, four, as you point to each set. In like manner, continue for 6, 8 and 10.