Your green pages: 56 skill-building activities you can use right now!

Teaching Pre K-8, Apr 2003 by Swartz, Elizabeth

Ideas for Pre-K through Grade 8

PRIMARY

Drip Drop Song

1 POETRY Some time during Poetry Month, share this poem on a rainy day. Discuss the sound and visual words with your class. Is this a good description?

Rain's the Same?

2 LANGUAGE ARTS Read the follow ing poem to the class. Discuss how it is similar and different from the poem in Activity #1. Have half of the class illustrate each poem. Observe how alike or different the illustrations are.

Algae in April

3 READING/CHARACTER EDUCATION Read The Green Dog by Melinda Luke (Kane Press, 2002), with your class. This story is about proving responsibility while pet sitting and also about how algae grows. Using the questions in the back of the book, start a science experiment with a jar of pond, lake or creek water and a nice sunny spot. If fresh water is not available, use water in which cut flowers had been left for several days.

Our Town

4 MAPPING Help children design and build a town using a flattened cardboard box. Draw the streets, build houses out of milk cartons and include little toy cars, airplanes and buses. Then provide chart paper and help children draw pictures of their town from above. Use the town for mapping skills, directionality and creative writing activities, too!

The Count of Room 14

5 MATH/SEQUENCING Print numbers from 1-100 on large cards. Randomly pass out some of the cards face down on the students' desks. Select one student to be the Count of the room. The Count will select eight students to take their cards and go to the front of the room. Once they hold up their cards, the Count puts them in the correct order.

Springtime Flowers

6 ART Split the seams on small paper cups and have the kids color rainbow rings on the inside and outside. Add a center of any color tissue paper and attach a stem and leaves. Mount the flowers along an entrance wall or dangle them from the ceiling.

ABC Kitten

7 READING/ALPHABET Read aloud the enchanting alphabet book, K is For Kitten by Niki Clark Leopold (G.R Putnam's Sons, 2002). Then take another subject, maybe a puppy or an ant and see if the class can tell an alphabet story together.

Weather You Can Count On

8 POETRY/MATH Read this poem during a springtime thunderstorm. Counting will help diffuse any fear of thunder your students may have.

The Storm

Crackle! Boom! A thunderstorm! How close is it, I wonder? I count the seconds in between The lightning flash and thunder.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, Three Mississippi - I smile. To calculate how close it is, I count five seconds per mile.

Four Mississippi, five Mississippi, I could count this way all day Six, seven, eight, nine, ten Mississippi-- Boom!

The storm's two miles away!

by Heidi Roemer

Tell Me A Story!

9 LANGUAGE ARTS Arrange for a local storyteller to visit your class on Stories Day, April 9. Check with local libraries and writers guilds for names. Or you can increase the fun for your students by doing a "teacher exchange" for a time that afternoon. Go to another room to read or tell stories while your children hear from another teacher. Check out the "Handbook For Storytellers" at http://fal con.jmuedu/-ramseyil/storybookhand book.htm

Jelly Bean Math

10 MATH Open a bag of mixed jelly beans. Have the children sort them by color. Estimate how many jelly beans are in each color group. Count out each group to check. Arrange the groups in order from the lowest number of jelly beans to the largest group. Have children tell their age and then count out that many jelly beans to eat.

Fish In Winter?

11 POETRY/SCIENCE Share with your class the book of easy-to-read poems in Where Do Fish Go In Winter and Other Great Mysteries by Amy Goldman Koss (Puffin Books, 1987). Then take whatever science concept you're studying and work together to write a poem complete with illustrations.

Blooming Spring

12 LANGUAGE ARTS Read the poem below to the children and demonstrate putting up the correct fingers throughout. After practicing, perform for another class.

The Season of Spring

One crocus, all alone. Two tulips, beautifully grown. Three poppies, flowery red, Four orchids in purple-pink dresses. Five violets, all waving, "Hi." Six zinnia. Showy, not shy. Seven heather, bell-shaped and bright. Eight daisies, yellow and white. Nine jasmine smelling so sweet, Ten blue gentian, in mountains we meet. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN different things, Blooming in the season of spring!

by Jacqueline Schiff

Tonight's Surprise

13 SOCIAL STUDIES Ask parent volunteers to help make up special envelopes for the week of April 21-27 while we are celebrating National Turn Off TV Week. Place books to read, pictures to color, directions for a physical game, directions and necessary materials for a board game, recipes for an easy-to-make healthy snack, note paper to write letters on, drawing paper and paints in envelopes. Send an envelope home with each child. Then, ask your students to rotate the envelopes and share what fun they had while the envelope was at their house.

Stories Unlimited

14 LANGUAGE ARTS On or before April 9, Stories Day, go with your class to check out the Kid's Storytelling Club at www.storycraft.com Have the kids pick and choose ideas that they want to incorporate for Stories Day.