Math Superlatives

We measured some folks around the school when the students were studying centimeters (they questioned who was the tallest teacher/principal, as well as Abraham Lincoln.  I then printed photos of them and we arranged them in order from shortest to tallest, etc and used verbal statements to make comparisons. 

Since the students have now moved onto money, each of the people were assigned a handful of change, which we then counted and ordered from least to greatest and so on.

Thankful Mayflower boats

We read a few Thanksgiving books and then created small Mayflower boats out of cardboard, the sails listed what children were thankful for.

Materials:
brown cardboard strips (from box), stapler, brown construction paper, black and brown markers, Dixie cups, Popsicle sticks, Elmer's glue, white paper, pencils, scissors

Steps:
1.  Build a cardboard frame out of a strip of cardboard, you could also use milk cartons
2.  Cover the frame in glue
3.  Wrap the frame in construction paper (making sure there was a bottom for the Dixie cup)
4.  Draw "wooden" boards and windows on our ships
5.  Turn the Dixie cup upside down and cut a slit in the top
6.  Insert the Popsicle stick mast
7.  Write our thankful items on the white paper and cut it out
8.  Attach it to the mast


Extension(s):  the children can also create Pilgrims to ride the ship,  write about the activity from a historical event perspective, as a "how to" paper, or a fiction story from a Pilgrim's perspective

 

Friendship Mandalas

We talked about mandalas and looked at some examples on line.  We discussed how people create them for spiritual reasons or to calm themselves, or to create something of beauty.  I drew a circle with three rings and cut it into quarters and copied it several times.  The children worked in groups of 4 to create a design.  They had the freedom of making any design they wanted, but one element (pattern or color) had to flow with the friend next to them, so they had to have a conversation about their plan.

Reindeer Heads

Fast and easy!  It just required brown, dark brown or black, and white construction paper, glue and a marker.  We cut out the shapes of the heads, the kids drew the antlers and pasted everything on.  Using a glue stick, minimal mess!

Word Sort with Beads

We do a lot of word sorts, which are great for ESL students and help with discriminating between words and reading visually similar patterns.  This week we were working on sn and sw words.  We did two different activities using our beads, a listening activity and then a visual identification activity.

For the listening activity, each student had two beads, a blue for words beginning with sw and a green bead for words beginning with sn.  I read down their list of words, and for each word, they would put the corresponding bead on the desk.

For example, the word snail, they would put a green bead down, for swim, a blue bead, and so on.

The second part of the lesson, they had the word list and seven green beads and seven blue beads.  They would place a bead over each beginning blend.  It is easy, quick, minimal preparation and minimal clean up!

Biography TImelines

A quick and easy way to separate main idea and details, while reading biographies and learning about the genre, is to create a timeline of a person's life.  This also solidifies the idea of chronological order, has children return to text to seek out information, and gives them the opportunity to learn about an influential person. 

Here are a few examples of timelines of Walt Disney's life, based on one particular biography, but we did additional research using other sources also.

Younger children or children with limited English can simply draw big events and perhaps label them, while older children can additionally write about the person's life, highlighting their accomplishments.

The Noisy Paintbox/Abstract Art Activity

Here is a fun activity that I did with third grade students after we read The Noisy Paintbox a biographical picture book of Vasya Kandindsky.  I also supplemented the lesson with images on an iPad showing paintings of his.  The children did a watercolor painting inspired by his work and then wrote a short paragraph about why they chose to do this particular painting.


Here are some examples of their work: