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13 results for "books"
Recipe Book
Preschool - 5th Grade
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 5th grade / 3 - 10 years This collaborative activity gets the whole family involved! Simply ask your students to bring in a favorite recipe from home (preferably typed on a plain standard sheet of printer paper). Encourage families to share delicious recipes unique to their heritage or ethnic backgrounds. Then have students use crayons to add decorative borders to the recipe pages. Collect the recipes and make colored copies for each student in your class. Distribute the copies and have students assemble the pages and staple them together to create recipe books that the children can take home to share with their families!
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Book of Class Records
Pre-K - 5th Grade
This activity is appropriate for: pre-k - 5th grade / 4 - 10 years Create your own classroom book of records! Make a list of records that students in your class might set. Some possible records might be: Most words read in one minute Most jumps on a jump rope in one minute Fastest times tables Highest stack of blocks Farthest (or highest) jump Try to have a wide range of records so that every student has a chance to set a record in something. Over the course of a few days, have kids compete to see who can set the various records. Write down the results, and then make a classroom book with the records listed. (If you have a digital camera, you can take photos of the winning kids to include on the pages.) Let students decorate the pages, and then bind them together into a book. Keep the book in your classroom library for next year’s kids to read—then let them try to break the records and set new ones!
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Top 10 List
Preschool - 3rd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 3rd grade / 3 - 8 years Every quarter, make a list of the books or stories the class has read. Then have students vote to determine the class favorites! Write the titles on a posterboard with the heading, “Our Top 10 Favorite Books.” Hang the poster prominently on a wall or from the ceiling and display the books around the poster to provide students with easy access and encourage rereading of the stories!
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Celebrating Earth Day
1st Grade - 5th Grade
This activity is appropriate for: 1st - 5th grade / 6 - 10 years Earth Day is April 22nd! Celebrate our planet with these engaging Earth Day ideas: Read All About It—Set up an Earth Day reading corner with interesting and age-appropriate books, such as Earth Day—Hooray! by Stuart J. Murphy, Let’s Celebrate Earth Day by Connie and Peter Roop, and Earth Book for Kids: Activities to Help Heal the Environment by Linda Schwartz. Invite students to read the books (or you can read them aloud to the class) and discuss ways they can help preserve our planet! Plant a Plant—Provide students with small terra-cotta pots and paints to decorate them. Then help students put soil in the pots and add seeds so they can grow their own plants! Remind students that planting trees and plants helps preserve the natural environment of our planet. Eco-Friendly Lunch Challenge—During the month of April (and throughout the rest of the year as well), encourage students to bring their lunch and snacks in reusable containers instead of disposable plastic or paper bags. Have students help you estimate the number of bags the class is saving by investing in reusable containers! Save-The-Planet Posters—Set up a center with markers, posterboard, construction paper and stickers, and have students make Earth-friendly signs. Encourage them to write slogans such as “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!” and “Keep our planet clean!” Post the signs around the school for the month of April! Pennies for the Planet—Invite your students to join in a nationwide effort to promote conservation efforts by contributing pennies (and other spare change) to Pennies for the Planet. Click here to learn how your class can get involved in this environmental effort by the National Audubon Society.
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End-Of-The-Year Scavenger Hunt
2nd Grade - 6th Grade
This activity is appropriate for: 2nd - 6th grade / 7 - 11 years Plan a scavenger hunt…for information your class learned throughout the year! Create a list of questions whose answers can be found in books the class read during the year. (Make sure copies of the books are available in your classroom library or reading center.) Make a copy of the list for each child in class, and then let them “hunt” for the answers. Have kids write down each answer and where they found it. Give children a time limit in which to find the information. When time is up, collect students' answers. Count up the correct answers and give a prize to the student(s) who found the most! Note: Tell children that they don’t need to answer the questions in order—that way, if the book needed to answer the first question is being used, they can simply answer another question on the list.
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“Celebrity” Read-A-Thon!
Preschool - 3rd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 3rd grade / 3 - 8 years March 2 is Read Across America Day, sponsored by the National Education Association. Celebrate this nationwide event by inviting neighborhood celebrities (e.g., local TV news anchors, community police officers or firefighters, a manager of a local supermarket or your neighborhood librarian) to visit your classroom and read aloud to the students! Then, host a Literature Lunch event for parents so they can share in the reading celebration, too. Invite parents to join their children for lunch in your classroom, followed by a shared reading time where parents cozy up with their children and quietly read picture books together. Students will delight in having these special visitors in their classroom throughout the day. Plus, having parents and other mentors model the excitement and joy of reading is sure to ignite students’ interest in literature!
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Chinese New Year Parade
Pre-K - 3rd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: pre-k - 3rd grade / 4 - 8 years Celebrate diversity by encouraging your class to conduct a Chinese New Year Parade! A few days before Chinese New Year, select a few books, such as Lanterns and Firecrackers: A Chinese New Year Story by Jonny Zucker or Dragon Dance: A Chinese New Year Lift-the-Flap Book by Joan Holub to read aloud to your students. Once they have a little background knowledge about Chinese New Year, provide them with some craft paper, paints, markers, and crepe paper streamers. Have students create colorful masks and banners to carry in a parade. Set aside a few minutes at the end of the day or during the lunch period to allow students to parade around the school grounds in celebration of Chinese New Year!
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Summertime Graphing
Preschool - 2nd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 2nd grade / 3 - 7 years Create fun graphs of students’ summertime favorites! (It’s a great way to show kids how much they have in common.) Make blank bar graphs using butcher paper or tagboard. Give sticky notes to the students, and have them write their name on each note. As you ask each question, have children place their sticky note in the correct graph column. Some possible questions might be: Do you like hot weather? (yes/no) Have you ever been to the beach? (yes/no) Do you like to play outside or inside when it is sunny? (outside/inside) Do you miss school during the summer? (yes/no) What is your favorite summer activity? (swimming/camping/picnics) What is your favorite ice cream flavor? (chocolate/strawberry/vanilla) What is your favorite book? (Give 3-4 choices of books you’ve read to the children.) What is your favorite game to play outside? (hide and seek/tag/hopscotch) What do you wear to protect yourself when you are outside? (sunscreen/hat/sunglasses/nothing) After each question is graphed, ask questions such as: Which choice had the most picks? Which choice had the fewest picks? How many more children picked _______ over _______?
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Donuts with Dad/Muffins with Mom
Preschool - 2nd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 2nd grade / 3 - 7 years Start a new parent-inclusive reading tradition in your classroom! Two or three times a year, invite parents to join their children during class time for a half hour of shared reading! Provide juice and a selection of breakfast treats, such as donuts and muffins, and encourage parents to bring their own reading material (e.g., novels, nonfiction books, magazines, or newspapers). Have students make their own reading selections as well, and set up cozy corners of pillows and blankets for everyone to use as they read. During the half-hour reading period, encourage parents to sit with their children and read silently together. (Note: For younger children who are not yet capable of reading on their own, you will want to have parents choose read-alouds to share quietly with their kids rather than having each read her own book.)
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Valentine Learning Centers
Kindergarten - 2nd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: kindergarten - 2nd grade / 5 - 7 years Make Valentine’s Day extra special with these fun and easy-to-use learning center ideas! Read Your Heart Out Reading Center Fill your classroom library with a dozen or so age-appropriate Valentine-themed books. Invite students to choose a story and curl up on some floor pillows for reading time! Some suggestions include: The Day It Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond Happy Valentine’s Day, Little Critter! by Mercer Mayer Nate the Great and the Mushy Valentine by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat Amelia Bedelia’s First Valentine by Herman Parish Arthur’s Great Big Valentine by Lillian Hoban The Biggest Valentine Ever by Steven Kroll The Night Before Valentine’s Day by Natasha Wing How Many Hearts? Math Center Students will love solving simple addition problems with this hands-on Valentine math center! To prepare the center, you will need a die, a few small heart-shaped stampers and a red ink pad, as well as several copies of the How Many Hearts? downloadable page. Cut the copies in half along the dotted line. Have each student take a How Many Hearts? sheet and roll the die. Encourage them to write down the number of dots shown and stamp the corresponding number of hearts above the number in the space provided. Repeat the process for the second number in the addition problem. Then, have students count the total number of stamps to find the correct answer. Variation: Instead of stamps, you can use colorful heart stickers! Can You Hear Your Heartbeat? Science Center This easy-to-create science center will introduce young children to the basic concept of scientific observation! Simply provide a stethoscope at the table for students to use. One at a time, have students use the stethoscope to listen to their heartbeats. Then, have them stand up and do ten jumping jacks and listen to their heartbeats again. Ask them what happened! (Note: You may want to have a parent or other adult volunteer stationed at this center to facilitate questions and clean the stethoscope earpieces with alcohol swabs or disinfecting pads between uses.) Valentine Verses Writing Center Set up a center with heart-themed writing paper and fun Valentine pens or pencils. Invite students to write a poem about people or things in their lives that they love. You may want to help them get started by displaying this poem on posterboard in your learning center. Prompt students to copy the lines of the poem and fill in the blanks with thoughts of their own! Roses are red, Violets are blue, I love my _______________ And ________________, too! Or, have students make up their own verses and write them on the downloadable heart-shaped writing template. After the poem is written, mount it onto red or pink construction paper. Display the poems on a bulletin board in your classroom for Valentine’s Day! Valentine Words Language Center Write the word “VALENTINE” in capital letters across a sentence strip and place it in a center. Provide students with paper and pencils and challenge them to make a list of as many words as they can spell using only the letters in that word! For variation, try the same activity with other Valentine’s Day words, such as sweetheart, candy, cupid, flowers, chocolate and so on.
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End-Of-The-Year Celebration
1st Grade - 6th Grade
This activity is appropriate for: 1st - 6th grade / 6 - 11 years As the school year comes to a close, try a few of these culminating activities to get your students reflecting on their progress! Grade-Level Graduation Encourage students to celebrate the end of a successful school year by hosting a graduation party! Purchase inexpensive graduation-themed paper plates and cups from a local party store and order a cake from a supermarket bakery. Then invite students to take turns sharing the accomplishments they are most proud of from the past year. Print out the End-Of-The-Year Diploma and present one to each student. Student Reflections Give a copy of the student memory book to each student, and encourage students to record their favorite memories and proudest moments from the past school year. Then have students take them home as keepsakes to share with their parents! Mixed Math Review Help students recall the many math concepts they learned this year with a fun-filled quiz game they create! Divide the class into small teams and distribute several copies of the Mixed Math Review! cards to each team. Then assign each team a chapter or section of their math textbook, and have them write down a question or problem on the back of each card. (Be sure to have each group create an answer key for their cards.) Simply place the cards in a pocket chart to create a quiz game that’s played just like a TV game show—and let students take turns answering questions for their teams! Tip: No time to create your own game? Check out our ready-made Math Quiz Game Shows for Grades 1-3 and Grades 4-6—each with over 200 level-appropriate question cards covering tons of essential math concepts!
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Classroom Map Hunt
1st Grade - 3rd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: 1st - 3rd grade / 6 - 8 years The sooner students feel comfortable in the classroom, the sooner they can take advantage of all your great classroom resources. Help familiarize students with their new classroom through this fun map hunt. Draw a map of your classroom. Don’t worry about your artistic ability, just make sure to include all the important classroom features, centers, and furniture you want your students to be familiar with. Your map will probably include things like a listening center, library, student tables, teacher’s desk, math center, sink, door, student cubbies, pencil sharpener, turn-in-your-work area, and so on. Consider using grid paper—it makes it easier to get the size relationships right. At the bottom of your map, include a list of directions. The directions should direct students toward the classroom features. Your list of directions might be something like this: Go to the place where you would listen to a book. Go to the place where you would pick up your mail. Find the place where you would turn in your assignment. Find the place where you would sharpen your pencil. Find your seat. Go to the place where you would find a book to read. Go to the place where you could wash your hands. Before you give each student a copy of your map, provide a tour of the classroom. Point out everything on the map, and explain (if necessary) why these features are important to their classroom experience. Then, pass a map out to each student. Give students 15-20 minutes (depending on the length of your list) to find all the places on the list. When they find a place, they should put an x next to it on the list. When the time is up, go through the list with the entire class.
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Spring Learning Centers
Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: kindergarten - 3rd grade / 5 - 8 years This month, set up some fun learning centers with these creative ideas for spring! Read & Learn Comprehension Center Encourage children to sharpen their comprehension skills with these engaging, spring-themed reading passages! Print out several copies of the Comprehension Cards and place them in a file folder. Have students read the passages silently or with a partner and answer the questions. Kite Scenes Geometry Center Place light blue construction paper and pattern blocks in a center. (If you don’t have pattern blocks, simply download this pattern blocks template and reproduce it for students to use.) On separate index cards, write the name of each pattern block shape, such as triangle, square, trapezoid, parallelogram, rhombus and hexagon. (Be sure to review the name of each shape before having students work independently!) Invite students to choose two or three cards, find the corresponding pattern blocks, and trace the blocks onto a 9" x 12" sheet of blue construction paper. If using the template, have students cut out the shapes and glue them onto the paper. Encourage them to use colored pencils or crayons to add details to the picture so that the shapes look like kites flying in the sky. They can draw the kites’ tails and strings, grass, flowers, clouds and more. After students have completed their pictures, have them describe the shapes they used in their pictures. Or, for older students, provide copies of the Pattern Block Kites reproducible and have them fill it out to describe their picture. Display the pictures with the students’ descriptions on a spring bulletin board titled “Pattern Block Kites.” Nature Detectives Science Center Take your students on a nature walk around the school grounds, and help them collect plant samples to bring back to the classroom for observation. (Or you can have them bring plants from home.) Provide each student with a magnifier and a Plants & Flowers Observation Sheet. Encourage them to examine their specimens and record their observations. After students are finished, invite them to tape their specimens to the top portion of a sheet of construction paper and attach the observation sheet to the bottom portion. Collect the pages, bind them together in a class book and place them in a science center for students to enjoy! For younger students, collect several specimens from plants common in your area, such as a fern, flower, branch and magnolia leaf. Attach each specimen to an index card and label it for added literacy exposure. Then place the cards at a center with magnifiers. Have students choose a specimen, observe it with the magnifier and draw it on a piece of paper. For additional writing practice, challenge students to label the picture by copying the name of the specimen. Little Ladybugs Counting Center Reproduce the ladybugs template onto red construction paper. Cut out the number tiles and ladybug counters, and place them at a center. (You can also laminate the pieces to make them more durable.) For young students, have them choose a number tile and count out the corresponding number of ladybugs. For older students, create additional tiles with math symbols such as an addition sign, a subtraction sign and an equal sign. Then prompt students to create math problems and use the ladybugs to find the answers! Write About It! Spring Language Center Reproduce these Spring-Themed Writing Prompts and place them at a center with pencils and crayons. Invite students to let their creativity flow as they write and illustrate their own stories!
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