We tried channeling spring with our annual "Spring Activity Day." The first grade at my school has approximately one activity day a month. Apples Day, Pumpkin Day, Gingerbread Activity Day, Winter, Spring, and Ocean Activity Day are a few activity days we typically have. On an activity day, we set aside a few hours and a few fun activities centered around a particular theme. Parent volunteers come in to help and a great day is had by all. Here are some photos of our Spring Activity Day this year:
We made boats out of tinfoil (if you try this I recommend small sized squares such as 4x4). Students drew a picture to show what their boat looked like. They also predicted how many pennies it would take to sink the boat and recorded their estimates.
We put our predictions to the test by placing our tinfoil boat in water and counting how many pennies we added to the boat until it sank. We also determined if our result involved using more or fewer pennies than we predicted. We subtracted to get our difference in penny prediction counts and actual counts. If you are are interested in the worksheet I found it from Lakeshore Learning.
Of course you can't think of Spring and not think of flowers and planting. We reviewed the life cycle of a seed with this fun project. The students enjoyed tearing construction paper to make the seed, soil, and parts of the plant and they used colored pencils for the labeling. They came out really cute!
The duck was also popular:
Last but not least, we made pussywillows by tracing and cutting out a vase pattern, drawing stems, and adding tiny bits of cottonballs. They added the following poem to their projects: "Close your eyes and do not speak, and I'll rub spring across your cheek" -Aileen Fisher
Happy Spring!
Julie I love the themed days that you all do! How fun. We build the boats in my county in first grade too. It's part of our Science Olympics.
ReplyDeleteOoooo Science Olympics sounds fun! Think you'll blog about it? I'd love to learn more about what you do with it.
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