Your GREEN PAGES 45 Skill-Building Activities You Can Use Right Now!

Teaching Pre K-8, May 2004 by Swartz, Elizabeth

Split Words

14 ART/LANGUAGE ARTS Ask the students to print a suffix or prefix on 12'' × 18'' oaktag. Outline the letters in heavy black crayon, which will help to keep paint from running off. Paint the letters and the background using contrasting colors. When the paint is dry, make curvy or zigzag lines on the back of the artwork, and cut the tag board apart on the lines. Glue the pieces to a large piece of paper, allowing space between the pieces.

Line Graphs

15 MATH Make a line graph by mounting a piece of graph paper on a corkboard and using yarn and push pins to make the line. Chart one group of data with one color of yarn, then use another group of data and chart it with a different color of yarn on the same graph. Then have students gather their own information to graph. Give them graph paper, plot the line, then attach a piece of yarn over their plotted line with a bit of glue.

Parents Activity

16 READING Sign out a book at the local library or ask your child to bring home a school-library book that contains a play. Read the play with different family members reading different parts so your child can see how a play is different from a regular story. For more fun, after reading the play once, cast the roles and act out the play with props and costumes.

Letters from the Heart

17 READING/WRITING Share the new book by Alan Durant, Dear Tooth Fairy (Candlewick Press, 2003), in which young Holly writes a letter to the tooth fairy instead of leaving her tooth. This beautiful exchange of letters between Holly and the tooth fairy will help letter writing make sense to your class. Ask the students to share with their classmates times when they have received letters that were important to them, then write meaningful letters - to grandparents, to younger students or to people in nursing homes.

LUCKY SUBSCRIBER

Monica Bacchus

Greensboro, NC

Weigh It, Mail It

18 MATH Borrow a postal scale from XO the school's office and have your students prepare packages of various sizes, estimating their weight and the cost of their postage. Then weigh the packages and find the actual cost of the postage by reading readily-available postage rate charts.

INTERMEDIATE GRADES

Wisps in the Wind

19 SCIENCE/POETRY Read the following poems together.

Dandelion

Summer snowflake made of fluff;

I pluck the stem and gently puff.

Each wisp drifts off at idle speed;

So Mother Nature sows her seed,

by Heidi Roemer

Golden Lions

They are the lions of the field.

Their manes are thick, rich gold.

And there they stand, in numbers great,

Through winds and breezes bold.

They do not growl or stalk about.

Instead, they gently sway.

For dandelions do just that,

Then they all blow away.

by Martin Shaw

Assign students to illustrate different parts of the poems. Then discuss other ways in which seeds are moved from one place to another. Have students find something in nature about which to write their own short poems.

Fantastic Flags

20 SOCIAL STUDIES In preparation for Flag Day on june 14, review the history of our nation's flag and all that it stands for, as well as introducing the history and meaning of your state's flag. Then invite students to design a personal flag with colors and symbols that represent themselves.