Board Game Bonanza!

One of my favorite end-of-the-year activities to do with my students is to have them create their own board games. I tell them that on a certain day we will have "second grade fun day" and encourage them to bring a board game from home. We begin by playing a few rounds of their store bought games, then when I see that their interest is beginning to wane, we clean up and go back to our desks. We brainstorm about different games and how they are played and I record their ideas on the SmartBoard. Then I tell them that they get to invent their very own board game! This is met with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm and for some, trepidation. Lol. I have them first make a plan for their game. They have to be able to tell what the object of the game is, how players will move around the board (will you use a spinner? Number cards? Color cards?), and what obstacles, if any, players will encounter. Then the fun begins. I give each student a pocket folder and let them choose two game pieces (I have a basket with hundreds of those cute shaped erasers, which are perfect for this), and a spinner or set of cards. Then they create away! The excitement is usually pretty high in the room at this point, and it's fun to listen to the conversations that take place. Finally, when everyone has completed their games, they pair off and take turns playing them. This is usually when you see a bit of revising and editing, but everyone is having fun. And they are always amazed that they get to keep their creations. Lol. Kids are so funny!

Earth Day Activities

For Earth Day we read the book Only One You by Linda Kranz. Afterward our class took a turn painting rocks to look like the fish characters in the story. The rocks will be used in a school beautification project.

Changing Stations

I decided to change up the way I do stations in the afternoons. Now instead of doing workbook pages for seat work an worksheets for centers activities, my students are using literacy task cards. They are doing a variety of reading, writing, and phonics activities. I've even turned my SmartBoard into a center. The kids are much more engaged, and station time is running much more smoothly.

More Fun with Idioms

We did lots of fun activities during our study of idioms (see a previous post on this). We read some fun Idiom Plays (Readers' Theater), and we decided to make posters to share what we learned from our reading about idioms.

Story Elements

In our classroom, we enjoy Readers' Theater as a way to have some fun and practice reading fluency. Recently, we studied story elements (character, setting, and plot), so we decided to compare and contrast our Readers' Theater scripts with some of our reading book stories. Here's what we came up with:

We are some smart cookies!

Podcasting - so many possibilities!

Water on Earth's Surface: A Science Content Vodcast

We are currently studying "Earth and Beyond" in our science curriculum. One of our activities focuses on Earth's water supply. This vodcast was created to address that activity.