Your GREEN PAGES: 53 Skill-Building Activities You Can Use Right Now!

Teaching Pre K-8, Feb 2005 by Swartz, Elizabeth

PRIMARY

A Half/Day

1 MATH On an early dismissal day, have your students experience everything in halves. Have half of each lesson, half a recess, half a cookie, send half of the class to the bathroom or library, etc. Be sure to show tactile, visual and audio examples of halves. Let the kids experience half a hug.

Don't Eat Snow

2 HEALTH/SCIENCE Conduct an experiment by collecting a pan of snow. Bring it into the classroom to melt and then pour the water through a coffee filter. What was left in the filter? Take samples from various areas to compare. The same experiment can be done with rain water.

Trees in Winter

3 SOClAL STUDIES/ART A tree in tJ winter can be made with brown corrugated paper to simulate the bark texture. Cut out strips for the trunk and branches. Arrange them in tree format and glue onto a sheet of blue construction paper. If corrugated paper is not available, cut strips of cardboard boxes and strip off one side. Dab on white paint with cotton swabs for flurries. In the spring, green paint can be used for blossoms, in the fall, use various colors for the changing leaves.

Who Am I?

4 LANGAUGE/SCIENCE Put pictures of farm animals into a bag. Let the children take turns pulling one card from the bag. Each child looks at the card, tells one fact about the animal and then imitates the animal's actions. Ask the class to guess the name of the animal.

Ways of Love

5 READING Read the book The Way I Love You by David Bedford & Ann James (Simon & Schuster, 2004) to your class. Then discuss what it is about friends, parents and pets that we love. Make heart shapes on which to write some of the responses, "I love the way you comb my hair, make my toast, toot your horn at my my bus stop, etc." Place them on a bulletin board in the school lobby to remind others how much little actions can mean.

LUCKY SUBSCRIBER

Kelly Ball

Lawrenceville, GA

Borrow a Pet

6 WRITING/SCIENCE Borrow a Small pet from a child's home or from another classroom. Have your students observe the pet. They should write down what it does, what it eats, what it looks like, etc. Borrow more pets during the school year and create a booklet with pictures called, "Our Classroom Visitors." Increase your students' observation and writing skill levels with each new visitor.

Reading the Rebus

7 READING Collect several rebus stories from children's magazines in your library. Read several to and with your students. Then ask the children to cut pictures out of magazines or catalogs that they could use in a rebus story. Provide construction paper hearts on which to affix the pictures. In group time, write your students' stories on chart paper.

Line Up the Day

8 MATH Introduce timelines by hanging a long piece of yarn on a bulletin board. Put up pictures as the day goes along to represent what is happening. Use coats, lunch boxes, balls, books, etc. to made a sequential pictostory of the day's activities. On another day, have the pictures posted before the children arrive, then see if the day turns out that way. Give each child a piece of drawing paper, a piece of yarn and crayons. Have them make a picto-story of the activities of a morning or evening activity.

Parents Activity

9 SCIENCE/HEALTH Did you know that it's Dental Health Month? A great activity to do this month with your kids and also to reinforce measuring skills is to make your own toothpaste together. Here's how to do it - combine four teaspoons of baking soda, one teaspoon salt, one teaspoon water and one drop of orange extract. Mix all of the ingredients together. Ask your child to try the toothpaste and see what he or she thinks. Afterwards, you can both visit the website www.ms-flossy.com/sindex.html and learn more about teeth and the importance of dental health.

Healthy Hearts

10 SCIENCE/HEALTH With your students, collect colorful pictures of fruits and vegetables from newspapers and magazines. Take your collected pictures and put them in order with ABC letters (A is for Apricot, B is for Broccoli, C is for Carrot, etc.) on a bulletin board. You can also display your pictures in a class scrapbook or paste them on a large piece of butcher paper. Keep in mind that a taste test might be in order if new and exotic fruits and vegetables are discovered by your students. Does the class think that they can eat five fruits and/or vegeta1 bles in a day? What varieties of fruit and vegetables might the children like? Be sure to suggest different kinds of juice, salads, etc.

Favorite Things

11 LISTENING/ART Read the following poem to the class. Ask them to illustrate what they hear in the poem. Have each child select only one section to illustrate. Then post the poem in the center of a bulletin board surrounded by your students' illustrations.

Winter Fun

I like to slide down icy

hills,

As bumpy as can be,

I like to tumble in snow

drifts,

Throw snowballs at a tree.

I like to twirl about on

ice,

And wear my gloves that

glow.

I guess, I just like ,

wintertime,

Along with all its snow.

by Martin Shaw

Happy Birthday, Handel

12 MUSIC This month, play CD'S of IeLa Handel's music. Put out drawing paper and crayons or paints for the children to illustrate what they hear. Allow quiet minutes to listen. Ask your music teacher to teach how to conduct in basic 2, 3 and 4 time along with the music.