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13 results for "colored"
Ice Cube Color Mixing
Preschool - 1st Grade
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 1st grade / 3 - 6 years Using colored ice cubes and lemonade, have your students mix different colors and watch the result! Make blue ice cubes using food coloring. Give each child a cup of yellow lemonade. Ask the class to predict what color the yellow and blue will create when mixed. Have the students put the blue ice cubes into the lemonade and watch as the colors mix and turn green. Take children outside and give them 2 different colored ice cubes (you choose the colors, depending on available food coloring). The children will watch as the ice cubes melt and mix into a different color. Have students draw a picture of what happened and, if they are able, write a few sentences.
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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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Colorful Countdown
Preschool - 2nd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 2nd grade / 3 - 7 years Cut strips of colored construction paper and have your children loop them together to make a paper chain. Then encourage them to count down to a certain anticipated event over the holidays (e.g., Christmas Day, the last night of Hanukkah, the beginning of Kwanzaa, New Year’s Eve, or even the first day of school after their holiday break). Have them label the links on the chain with numbers corresponding to the dates on the calendar. You can even have them alternate colors of construction paper to practice skip counting by odd and even numbers. Or show them how to repeat the same colors every three or four links to make a color pattern.
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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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Tree of Thanks Writing Project
Pre-K - 3rd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: pre-k - 3rd grade / 4 - 8 years Have your students carefully trace and cut out the printable leaf patterns onto colored sheets of construction paper. Encourage students to write something for which they are thankful on the leaves. Attach the finished leaves to a bulletin board atop a butcher paper tree trunk to make a colorful, seasonal display.
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Fun with Bubbles
Preschool - 1st Grade
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 1st grade / 3 - 6 years Use bubbles to explore shapes, counting and colors! Below are some activities you can do with store-bought bubbles or a homemade solution made from dishwashing soap and water. (If you do these activities indoors, be sure to lay down newspapers or towels to prevent a slippery floor.) Encourage scientific observation skills! As children blow bubbles, ask: “What happens if you blow hard? If you blow softly? If you touch a bubble? How long do bubbles last? What color are bubbles? Are all bubbles the same shape? The same size?” Record children’s observations on chart paper labeled “Observations About Bubbles.” Add some liquid tempera to the bubble mixture, and hang poster paper on an easel. Have children blow bubbles onto the paper and see what designs form when they pop. Encourage active play! Go outside. Choose three children to be the bubble blowers. Set a time limit and have them blow as many bubbles as they can while the other kids race to pop the bubbles. Build counting skills with bubbles! Encourage the children to blow a set of bubbles that you specify. (For example, if you say “three,” children would try to blow three bubbles.)
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Gumdrop Graphing
Pre-K - 2nd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: pre-k - 2nd grade / 4 - 7 years What better way to practice essential math skills, while celebrating the flavors of the holiday season, than to conduct a graphing activity…with gumdrops! Begin by purchasing several bags of gumdrops from your local supermarket or drugstore. Divide the bags into individual cups of about 15–20 gumdrops each. (You will need one cup of gumdrops for each student in your class, or one cup for every two students if you have them work in pairs.) Download the Gumdrop Graphing chart and make a copy for each student or pair of students. Have students write the names of the gumdrop colors across the bottom of the chart. Give students the cups of gumdrops and have them place their gumdrops in vertical columns by color to fill in the graph on the sheet. Next, guide students in answering questions about their graphs. For example, you might ask: What is the total number of gumdrops on your graph? Do you have more black gumdrops or more red gumdrops? Which column has the least number of gumdrops? The most? Are any of the columns the same height? If so, which ones? And what does this mean? How many more/fewer yellow gumdrops are there than green gumdrops? Once you have used the graphs to make mathematical comparisons, invite students to eat the gumdrops as a special holiday treat!
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Sharing the Dream of Dr. King
Kindergarten - 6th Grade
This activity is appropriate for: kindergarten - 6th grade / 5 - 11 years Read or listen to a recording of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. (For younger students with shorter attention spans, you may want to select a small portion instead of the entire speech.) Afterward, discuss some of the ways Dr. King was hoping to accomplish peace among people. Then, engage students in a follow-up activity that allows them to express their own ideas of how we can live in harmony with one another: For Grades K–2: Have students draw a picture of ways they can spread peace to one another (e.g., sharing, making friends, helping each other, etc.). Then have them complete the sentence “I can bring peace by _______________.” For Grades 3–5: Have students write about ways they can get along with others and spread peace. For Grades 6 and up: Ask students to explain what Dr. King meant when he called for people to be “judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” and share some examples of when and how they can do this.
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Letter to Next Year’s Class
Kindergarten - 6th Grade
This activity is appropriate for: kindergarten - 6th grade / 5 - 11 years Have your students write letters with advice for the kids who’ll follow in their footsteps next year! It’s a great way for children to review what they did during the course of the year. Encourage students to emphasize positive, fun things about their school year—they’re trying to help next year’s class get excited about the year, not be anxious about it! Things they might write about include advice on how to get good grades, things to do and not to do, favorite themes or field trips, etc. Store the letters over the summer, and then take them out on the first day of school next year. You can then post them in your room, read parts of the letters aloud or hand them out for students to read on their own. Instead of writing letters, you could have students create a poster for next year’s class. Children can work together to brainstorm what tips they would like to include, and then they can write, draw and color the poster. Students could also create a “Classroom Handbook” full of helpful tips, suggestions and favorite memories. Bind students’ pages together into a booklet, and place it in your classroom library for students to look over next year.
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Pin the Tail on the Turkey
Pre-K - 1st Grade
This activity is appropriate for: pre-k - 1st grade / 4 - 6 years Print out this turkey template. As a variation of a familiar classic, have students take turns pinning the “tail” on the turkey. First, cut out the feather portion of the turkey template and trace it onto different colors of construction paper. Cut out each feather. Then cut out the turkey’s body and attach it to a wall or door. Give each student a tail feather and have each child print his name on a feather. Loop a piece of tape, sticky side out, and attach it to the backside of the feather. One at a time, blindfold the students and have them spin around once or twice, then instruct them to walk toward the wall and pin their “tails” on the turkey! The student who pins his “tail” closest to the correct spot on the turkey wins.
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Leprechaun Hunt
Preschool - 2nd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 2nd grade / 3 - 7 years Take your students on a “Leprechaun Hunt” for St. Patrick’s Day! Before the hunt, cut out and decorate this adorable leprechaun template with glitter and sequins. Hide the leprechaun in the lunchroom or cafeteria at your school. Next, cut apart these clues and distribute them to the various clue locations throughout your school (e.g., library, principal’s office and playground). Note: If you need to change the location of any of the clues to fit the circumstances at your school, don’t forget to modify the text of the clues accordingly. When students arrive, begin the Leprechaun Hunt by reading the first clue aloud to them. Invite them to guess where they should look. Then, as a class, walk to each location, reading the clues as they are revealed along the way. After the class has found the leprechaun, provide students with a copy of their own leprechaun to color, along with the poem to practice reading at home!
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Science Safari
Preschool - 3rd Grade
This activity is appropriate for: preschool - 3rd grade / 3 - 8 years Spring is the perfect time of year to engage students in observing the natural world around them. Give students small paper or plastic bags and guide them on a “Science Safari” nature walk around the school grounds. Encourage students to collect two or three specimens along the way, such as blades of grass, leaves, rocks, flowers or even a pinch of dirt. Once you are back in the classroom, divide students into pairs and provide each pair with a magnifier. Tell students that scientists use their senses and pay attention to detail to make observations and new discoveries. Invite students to observe their specimens under the magnifier and describe what they see. Have them categorize the items according to their descriptions (e.g., by color, shape, texture, size, and so on). If possible, try using microscopes instead of magnifiers!
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Manipulating Money
Pre-K - 1st Grade
This activity is appropriate for: pre-k - 1st grade / 4 - 6 years In honor of Presidents’ Day, take the opportunity to point out to your students that most U.S. coins feature pictures of past American presidents. Then, let your students explore the coins hands-on with these fun activities! Coin Rubbing—Divide the class into groups of three or four, and provide each group with several different coins to share. Then, give each student a sheet of paper and some crayons. Have students place the paper on top of a coin and gently color over the paper with the side of a crayon to make a coin rubbing. Encourage them to repeat the process with both sides of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. The result will be colorful imprints of a variety of coins! Penny Probability—Place three pennies and a dime into a paper bag. Ask students to predict which of the two types of coins they are likely to pull out of the bag at random. Test their predictions by drawing a coin out of the bag and recording which coin was selected. Replace the coin and repeat this process 10 times. Allow different student volunteers to take turns removing and replacing the coins. At the conclusion of the demonstration, guide students in discovering that the probability of selecting the penny out of the bag is 3 out of 4, while the probability of selecting the dime is only 1 out of 4. Simple Sorting—Reinforce categorizing and sorting skills by having students work in pairs to sort jars of coins into piles by coin type. Then, have them arrange the different piles in order by size or by value. Penny Predictions—Hold up a penny and ask students to guess how many drops of water they think will fit on the penny. As they guess, ask them to explain why they think their guesses are reasonable. Then have each student work with a partner and give each pair a penny, an eyedropper, and a small cup of water. Encourage the pair to designate one person to count while the other carefully places drops of water onto the penny—one drop at a time until the water “overflows” and drips off of the surface of the penny. Then have them switch roles to try it again. Invite the class to compare their results and discuss whether or not they were consistent. (You might want to provide a simple explanation for how the water drops cling to the penny’s surface and create a “net” called surface tension until the force of gravity becomes stronger than the water and causes the “net” to break.)
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