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

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

Family Subjects

21 POETRY Much of Eileen Spinelli's poetry is based on family members and events. Share one of her books, or her new one, In Our Backyard Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2004) to see how everyday happenings, like Grandpa having a cold, can be turned into a poem. Send your students home in search of a subject for their next poem.

LUCKY SUBSCRIBER

Jill Wyrwa

Buffalo Grove, IL

Does Your Garden Grow?

22 SCIENCE Use waterproof household cement to glue a pine cone in the center of an aluminum pie plate. Stand up the pine cone so it resembles a tree. After the glue dries, sprinkle grass seed into the pine cone and fill the pie plate with one inch of water. Refill the water when necessary. After a few days, what happens? How did the grass seed receive the water it needed?

Protractor Power

23 MATH When studying angles, send your students around the room and building with a list of degrees for which they need objects and/or later with a list of objects on which you want them to find angles. Ex: 45°, or the angle at which the paper tray fits into the printer.

States and Countries

24 SOCIAL STUDIES Have students use felt and Velcro" to make their own countries or continents to study. Trace the area onto tissue paper using a pencil, then retrace the tissue paper onto the felt with a black permanent marker. Then trace the inner sections (states or countries) onto the tissue paper and make them from different colors of felt. Attach tiny pieces of Velcro to the continent and the matching country. For added challenge, have students make name labels and include capital cities.

Not a Baby!

25 READING/WRITING A new baby doesn't always sound like good news to a grade school child. Share the book, Love That Baby!: A Book About Babies For New Brothers, Sisters, Cousins, and Friends by Kathryn Lasky (Candlewick Press, 2004). It explains plainly why babies do some of the things they do (put food in their ears) and how siblings can help (ways to make a baby stop crying). Discuss babies that your students have met. Ask students who have baby siblings to write how-to pieces for those who do not. Have students who don't have babies at home write about whether or not they would like to have one. It's also fun to ask parents to write a paragraph about what the student was like as a baby and send in a baby photograph of the student.

LUCKY SUBSCRIBER

Cher Meler

Mount Vernon, OH

Parents Activity

26 HEALTH/SOCIAL STUDIES May is Family Wellness Month. Take a few minutes together to plan an evening that is just for the family. Include hugs, laughs, bare feet and smiles all around. Make signs to put on the doors: CLOSED FOR FAMILY TIME. Don't answer the phone or let anyone do office or school work. be a family, enjoying one another for one whole evening and declare yourselves free of the world.

Food Fractions

27 MATH/HEALTH Find a couple of simple recipes for healthy snacks (like the one presented here, or for trail mixes, etc.) that your class can make for an afternoon poetry reading or a Mother's Day celebration. Have some groups double a recipe or triple one, practicing math and getting a little practice in an important life skill.