Teaching Day-by-Day: A Cornucopia of Activities

1. Practice the alphabet with Cookie Monster's "Letter of the Day" online game at www.pbskids.org/sesame and then bake up some tasty alphabet pretzels following a kid-created recipe at www.pbskids.org/zoom.
2. Explore point of view with Jon Scieszka's witty The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by A. Wolf (Dutton Books, 1995). Then work with your students to recreate other classic fairy tales from another character's point of view.
3. Parents and teachers can make the most of a library visit with kids by prepping with this online video at www.pbskids.org. Help your students learn about library categorization methods by playing the fun-filled "Flood" game on the Between the Lions website.
4. Younger kids can play with poetry through Elmo's rhyming game on the Sesame Street website, at www.pbskids.org/sesame/ while older students submit their own visions in verse to "Fern's Poetry Club" on the Arthur website, at www.pbskidsgo.org/arthur.

5. By exploring Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese pictograms online, students can learn about different written language systems. Ask your students to work in small groups to create a new language of their own. Be sure they write down the rules governing their language.
6. Take a trip to the Cyberchase "Logic Zoo" to help kids classify, compare and contrast. Go to www.pbskidsgo.org/cyberchase/games.
7. Kids can have fun with onomatopoeia (even if they can't spell it!) with a contest to write songs with as many examples of onomatopoeia as possible. The Between the Lions game "Wordplay" offers a great introduction, at www.pbskids.org/lions.
8. Having trouble with homonyms? Create poster art for the classroom by having your students work in groups to illustrate funny homonym pairs. What would "tense tents" look like? How about a special coat for a music star, a "rap wrap?"
9. Help parents understand how students may struggle with a learning disability – or get refresher information for yourself – at www.pbs.org/misunderstoodminds.
10. Looking for ways to work with Spanish-speaking parents of struggling readers? Explore ¡Colorín Colorado!, a bilingual website with video, activity ideas and more – www.colorincolorado.org.
11. On a large sheet of paper, help your students make a list of ways to keep healthy (a nutritious and well-balanced diet, washing regularly, exercising). Talk about things kids can do that help prevent injury and go online to www.safekids.org for more information.
12. Help your students develop an awareness of nutritious foods by creating a food pyramid on a large paper triangle. Brainstorm a list of snacks for each category.

13. Using your paper food pyramid, have students choose food pictures from magazines and cut them out and glue the pictures in the appropriate categories on the pyramid. Also, take kids online to www.mypyramid.gov for the latest adaptable version from the FDA.
14. PBS Parents' "Child Development Tracker" (www.pbsparents.org/childdevelopment) gives quick information on children's growth in many areas – from language to literacy to physical and emotional health. Find out more online.
15. Have students listen to their hearts and lungs through a stethoscope. Ask them to then run in place for several minutes and listen to their hearts and lungs again. What's changed? Why?
16. Ask the class for definitions of "good sportsmanship." What is a "poor sport?" Record the answers on the board or on paper. After discussing the definitions, ask the class what situations require good sportsmanship (playing on the playground, P.E. time, etc).
17. Pick one student to help demonstrate good and poor sportsmanship. You and the student should step aside and plan the two roles. Role-playing ideas might include you acting like a big sore loser, stomping your feet or angrily walking away. Ask your students which reactions were the healthiest.

18. Students can make their own "rag ball" for a game of in-class or at-home basketball to improve eye-hand coordination. Follow Mister Rogers' instructions at www.pbskids.org/rogers.
19. Read Alligator Arrived with Apples: A Potluck Alphabet Feast by Crescent Dragonwagon (Aladdin, 1992). Make your own Thanksgiving feast class big book.
20. Invite guest speakers who work in fitness, are athletes or are people who follow a healthy body and mind program to your classroom. Encourage your guest to bring along the tools of his or her trade.

21. Do your students want to grow up to study dinosaurs? Take them on a webquest to Dinosaur Trek (library.thinkquest.org) to explore fact sheets, games, training treks and a gallery of dinosaur images.
22. How long is a minute? Using an egg timer, show your students how long 60 seconds can be. Then brainstorm ideas by asking the kids to estimate what they can accomplish in just one minute.

23. Read Galileo's Treasure Box by Catherine Brighton (Walker & Company, 2001) to your class. This wonderful book tells the story of Galileo's daughter, Virginia, as she explores her father's experiments with lenses and gravity.
24. Survey your students to find out everyone's favorite pie to eat at Thanksgiving. Chart the results using – what else? – a pie chart!
25. Older students can explore math and baseball at the same time with lessons from Ken Burns' Baseball at www.pbs.org/kenburns/baseball/teachers/.

26. In A. Pintura: Art Detective students can learn about famous artists, composition, style and perspective as they play A. Pintura, a 1940s noir detective who helps identify a mystery painting. www.eduweb.com/pintura.
27. Play a shape-recognition game with Sesame Street's Zoe, matching and associating basic shapes with appropriate common objects. www.pbskids.org/sesame/zoe/index.html.

28. Ask students to gather all the writing implements they can find in the classroom and lay them out end to end. Measure the resulting length with yardsticks and rulers. How many crayons make up a yard? How many pencils make up a foot?
29. Practice counting with young students as their classmates run, skip or walk laps around a short indoor course. Record results on a chart to show who went the farthest.

30. Visit the Building Big website at www.pbs.org/buildingbig/educator for lesson plans and activities for older students on how columns hold up buildings to how suspension bridges work.

PBS TeacherSource helps PreK-12 educators with 3,000+ free lesson plans and teachers' guides on hundreds of topics – all correlated to national and state curriculum standards. Visit www.pbs.org/teachersource to access these educational resources, professional development materials and to sign up for a free weekly newsletter for teachers.

November/December, 2005, Vol.36, No.3