Reference Publications

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

Teaching Pre K-8, Nov/Dec 1999

PROTECTORS

SOCIAL STUDIES: The children brainstorm how families protect their property (locks, alarms, etc.). Probe for the need for protection. Ask if a dog can help protect and how. Help the children research the kinds of dogs that can be trained to protect. EXTRA: Give the children copies of "My Best Friend" (see Activity 45). Ask if the dog in the poem might help protect its owner's property, too. Probe for reasons for the responses.

IN POETRY

LANGUAGE ARTS: Give the children copies of the following poem:

Colors

Colors cover our world this time of year

With messages that holidays are here.

Green speaks of something new.

White sparkles everything in view

Gold brings in a special glow

Red puts on an unusual show.

Silver trails across the sky.

Blue fills raindrops that cry.

Colors cover our world this time of year

With messages that holidays are here.

by Virginia S. Brown

Partners take turns reading the lines of the poem aloud. Challenge each child to write a poem about a favorite holiday color. Make a bulletin board of different colored ornaments along with the children's proofread poems.

HANGING DECORATIONS

ART: Each child makes about six different ornaments (e.g., star, bell, peppermint stick, half moon, etc.) Provide colorful tissue paper for the child to gift wrap the set of ornaments to take home.

DOWN THE SLOPES

Read Snowboard Showdown by Matt Christopher (Little, Brown, 1999). Ask your child to read the story title and tell what each word in it means. Probe for ideas of what might happen in a snowboard showdown. After the story is read, invite your child to imagine other characters in the story and tell what they did.

RECIPE AMOUNTS

MATH: Give the children copies of "Special Meal" (see Activity 17).

They read the poem and identify the Thanksgiving food. Help them collect recipes for holiday food (not requiring meats and fish). The children form groups. Each group selects a recipe. Help the children acquire the ingredients. Provide measuring devices and bowls, spoons, etc, Each group prepares its chosen food item, reading each recipe direction, measuring and identifying the amount required, etc.

OUR THEME

SOCIAL STUDIES: On the chalkboard, list career areas: art, music, medicine, writing, speaking, math, etc. The children read the list and select one of the areas to study throughout the month. Provide a variety of activities involving science, art, social studies, drama, etc., related to the area. Plan for career people involved in the chosen area to visit and present information, give a performance, do demonstrations, etc. Each month, a new area is selected. Make videos or cassette tapes for presenting to parents and the school board.

Grade 5.0 Through Grade 8.0

MILLENNIUM FEVER

SOCIAL STUDIES AND ART: Celebrate the move into the last year of the 20th century with a timeline mural. Use Turn of the Century by Ellen Jackson (Charlesbridge, 1998) as a springboard for looking at customs and ways of life for children in Europe and the U.S. at the beginning of each century from the year 1000 to the year 2000. Small groups can research one century and prepare drawings and charts to add to a larger class timeline. Students can draw borders around each page and continue the themes modeled in the book.