Your Green Pages May 2004
By Elizabeth Swartz

For a downloadable version of the Green Pages click here. PDF 641KB

Primary Grades
1. A Tower of Lunch
   Health Use the children's natural love of towers to teach about the food pyramid. Make a large cardboard pyramid and ask the children to attach pictures from food containers in each of the categories. Could the class build a real tower of food? Why or why not? Could they use empty food containers and build the tower with everything in the correct places? Why do there have to be more foods in the category at the bottom? Make a pyramid of colored blocks with each color representing one food category.

2. Patterning with Pasta
   Math Spray-paint several different pasta shapes with different colors. Design a pattern with the pasta shapes and glue it onto poster board. Have students continue the pattern. Give each student enough pasta with which to create another design for someone else to continue.
3. Bulletin Board Zoo
   Science Design a large bulletin board to look like a zoo, with sections for birds, reptiles, mammals, etc. Have students collect pictures of animals from magazines and catalogs, then invite the children to put the animals in the correct section of the zoo. Set aside some sharing time when students can add new pictures of animals and tell what they know about those animals.
4. Days into Weeks
   Poetry Teach your students this poem to help them learn the days of the week. Note that our poet has taken some poetic license – Sunday is actually the first day of the week!


Days Become Weeks

by Martin Shaw

For every week that passes,
These days make up a part,
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Is how each week does start,

Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
Then follow one by one,
'Til at last comes Sunday,
And then the week is done.

5. A Wild World
   Art In acknowledgment of Maurice Sendak's birthday on June 10, design an exhibit with vines, palm trees or moonscapes in which to place drawings of "wild things" created by your class after sharing his famous book, Where the Wild Things Are (HarperCollins, 1988).
6. Wild Storyboard
   Language Arts Using the characters created in the previous activity, have each student lay out a storyboard of six or eight squares. Write and illustrate a story on the storyboard.
7. Slithery Friends
   Reading/Science Read together the following poem.
   

   Little Worm

   by Heidi Roemer

   Little worm,
   Little worm,
   What do you do
   When a springtime robin
   Is stalking you?

   Little worm,
   Little worm,
   Where do you hide
   When the summer sun
   Makes it hot outside?

   Little worm,
   Little worm,
   Where do you go
   When cold Autumn rain
   Turns into snow?

   Collect books and articles about worms. Divide a bulletin board into quadrants for the seasons and show what happens to worms in each season.


8. Fantastic Flowers
   Art Fold five pieces of 6" x 9" colored copier paper accordion-style to make a six-inch fan. Scrunch together one end of the fan and staple it to hold the fan shape. Staple all five fans together in a circle. Cut a circle from shiny paper, wallpaper or an old greeting card and glue it in the center to hide the place where all the fan ends are joined together. Staple the flower to an oaktag background, add a stem of construction paper and a flowerpot cut from old scraps of fabric or wallpaper. Have students label the plant parts and add seeds to the center.

9. Sliding Thermometers
   Science/Math/Art Make thermometers out of white drawing paper with a slit at the bottom and the top into which you can place a slip of colored paper. Mark the thermometer in increments of two, five or 10 degrees and use positive as well as negative numbers. Use the thermometers in large group math work, use them on a bulletin board, etc. Each student can write a paragraph about his/her own favorite temperature.
10. Bit by Bit the Flower Grows
    Science/Sequencing Have each student fold a piece of paper into four sections. Glue a flower seed in the first section. Discuss what the seed needs in order to grow. In the second section, draw raindrops falling onto the ground and, in the third section, a sun shining onto the little plant. In the fourth section, draw a flower and label its parts. In a variation, use each section to draw the cycle of the plant by showing the seed, the seed with roots, etc.
11. Retelling Fun
    Reading Provide flannel and/or felt scraps for students to use in making setting, character and plot symbols to use when retelling a story on a flannel board. Children can work in teams or pairs to prepare and present the retelling of your latest reading story, using their fabric symbols.
12. Leather-Look Pencil Holder
    Art/Language Arts Cover a clean frozen-juice can with torn pieces of masking tape. On each one of the pieces, students use a black crayon to write adjectives that describe their fathers. Paint the entire can with brown shoe polish or brown tempera paint and let it dry. Send the pencil-holder juice cans home for Father's Day, along with student-written poems that include the adjectives written on the can.
13. The Best Present Ever
    Writing Model this activity by bringing in a gift that someone gave you. Show the gift to your class and write about it on the overhead. When, where and from whom did it come? What makes the gift so special? Have you had it a long time? How do you care for it? Invite students to bring in a special item of their own to show to their classmates. Ask the students to write about the item, describing it and discussing what makes it special.

14. Split Words
    Art/Language Arts Ask the students to print a suffix or prefix on 12" x 18" oaktag. Outline the letters in heavy black crayon, which will help to keep paint from running off. Paint the letters and the background using contrasting colors. When the paint is dry, make curvy or zigzag lines on the back of the artwork, and cut the tag board apart on the lines. Glue the pieces to a large piece of paper, allowing space between the pieces.
15. Line Graphs
    Math Make a line graph by mounting a piece of graph paper on a corkboard and using yarn and push pins to make the line. Chart one group of data with one color of yarn, then use another group of data and chart it with a different color of yarn on the same graph. Then have students gather their own information to graph. Give them graph paper, plot the line, then attach a piece of yarn over their plotted line with a bit of glue.
16. Parents Activity
    Reading Sign out a book at the local library or ask your child to bring home a school-library book that contains a play. Read the play with different family members reading different parts so your child can see how a play is different from a regular story. For more fun, after reading the play once, cast the roles and act out the play with props and costumes.
17. Letters from the Heart
    Reading/Writing Share the new book by Alan Durant, Dear Tooth Fairy (Candlewick Press, 2003), in which young Holly writes a letter to the tooth fairy instead of leaving her tooth. This beautiful exchange of letters between Holly and the tooth fairy will help letter writing make sense to your class. Ask the students to share with their classmates times when they have received letters that were important to them, then write meaningful letters – to grandparents, to younger students or to people in nursing homes.
18. Weigh It, Mail It
    Math Borrow a postal scale from the school's office and have your students prepare packages of various sizes, estimating their weight and the cost of their postage. Then weigh the packages and find the actual cost of the postage by reading readily-available postage rate charts.

Intermediate Grades


19. Wisps in the Wind
    Science/Poetry Read the following poems together.
    

    Dandelion

    by Heidi Roemer

    Summer snowflake made of fluff;
    I pluck the stem and gently puff.
    Each wisp drifts off at idle speed;
    So Mother Nature sows her seed.

    

    Golden Lions

    by Martin Shaw

    They are the lions of the field.
    Their manes are thick, rich gold.
    And there they stand, in numbers great,
    Through winds and breezes bold.

    They do not growl or stalk about.
    Instead, they gently sway.
    For dandelions do just that,
    Then they all blow away.

    Assign students to illustrate different parts of the poems. Then discuss other ways in which seeds are moved from one place to another. Have students find something in nature about which to write their own short poems.

20. Fantastic Flags
    Social Studies In preparation for Flag Day on June 14, review the history of our nation's flag and all that it stands for, as well as introducing the history and meaning of your state's flag. Then invite students to design a personal flag with colors and symbols that represent themselves.
21. Family Subjects
    Poetry Much of Eileen Spinelli's poetry is based on family members and events. Share one of her books, or her new one, In Our Backyard Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2004) to see how everyday happenings, like Grandpa having a cold, can be turned into a poem. Send your students home in search of a subject for their next poem.

22. Does Your Garden Grow?
    Science Use waterproof household cement to glue a pine cone in the center of an aluminum pie plate. Stand up the pine cone so it resembles a tree. After the glue dries, sprinkle grass seed into the pine cone and fill the pie plate with one inch of water. Refill the water when necessary. After a few days, what happens? How did the grass seed receive the water it needed?
23. Protractor Power
    Math When studying angles, send your students around the room and building with a list of degrees for which they need objects and/or later with a list of objects on which you want them to find angles. Ex: 45°, or the angle at which the paper tray fits into the printer.

24. States and Countries
    Social Studies Have students use felt and Velcro® to make their own countries or continents to study. Trace the area onto tissue paper using a pencil, then retrace the tissue paper onto the felt with a black permanent marker. Then trace the inner sections (states or countries) onto the tissue paper and make them from different colors of felt. Attach tiny pieces of Velcro to the continent and the matching country. For added challenge, have students make name labels and include capital cities.
25. Not a Baby!
    Reading/Writing A new baby doesn't always sound like good news to a grade school child. Share the book, Love That Baby!: A Book About Babies For New Brothers, Sisters, Cousins, and Friends by Kathryn Lasky (Candlewick Press, 2004). It explains plainly why babies do some of the things they do (put food in their ears) and how siblings can help (ways to make a baby stop crying). Discuss babies that your students have met. Ask students who have baby siblings to write how-to pieces for those who do not. Have students who don't have babies at home write about whether or not they would like to have one. It's also fun to ask parents to write a paragraph about what the student was like as a baby and send in a baby photograph of the student.
26. Parents Activity
    Health/Social Studies May is Family Wellness Month. Take a few minutes together to plan an evening that is just for the family. Include hugs, laughs, bare feet and smiles all around. Make signs to put on the doors: CLOSED FOR FAMILY TIME. Don't answer the phone or let anyone do office or school work. Be a family, enjoying one another for one whole evening and declare yourselves free of the world.
27. Food Fractions
    Math/Health Find a couple of simple recipes for healthy snacks (like the one presented here, or for trail mixes, etc.) that your class can make for an afternoon poetry reading or a Mother's Day celebration. Have some groups double a recipe or triple one, practicing math and getting a little practice in an important life skill.


Frozen Fruit Cones

2/3 cup fresh fruit
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/3 cup nonfat plain yogurt
4 ice cream cones

Combine the first three ingredients and blend together, then place them in a baking dish, cover and place in a freezer for two hours. Then scoop some of the mixture into cones and serve.

28. Coordinating Your Points
    Math Using graph paper, have students draw a picture of an object. Then, by recording only the coordinates and numbering them in order, determine whether the picture can be reproduced. Exchange points and see if the coordinates work.
29. Everyday Resources
    Science/Social Studies Introduce and discuss renewable and nonrenewable resources. Brainstorm with the students lists of the renewable and nonrenewable resources that you deal with in your school each day. Then have students make lists of renewable and nonrenewable resources that they use at home. Discuss how our schools and homes will operate when some of these materials are gone. What will replace paper? What will replace fossil fuel? Are any of your students interested in pursuing a future in science to help answer these questions and needs?
30. Precious Pets
    Writing Have students bring in a picture of a current or past pet. Give the prompt, "When I was little I had a pet..." Have students complete the writing, then ask them to write a how-to article that would teach another person how to care for this type of pet. Compare and contrast the two kinds of writing. Does anyone in the class want to have a different kind of pet after hearing about their friends' experiences?
31. Working Pets
    Social Studies The month of May contains National Pet Week and National Police Week so why not combine them? Contact your local police department to inquire about police dogs, tracking dogs and seeing-eye dogs. Invite a local speaker to come in with his/her working pet and explain the training involved as well as the services provided. You may even have an organization in your area that trains seeing-eye dogs.

Middle Grades


32. Hear Ye, Hear Ye
    Geography/Geometry Copy and distribute maps of your town. Have students use their geometric skills to plan an efficient newspaper route that would work without any streets being traveled twice. How can geometry help in planning a vacation? Can your students use the same skills in designing a game board that would provide a shorter route to some lucky players who happened to roll the right number?
33. Feel The Beat
    Music May 24 is International Jazz Day. Have your students research in the library and online about the roots of jazz and some famous jazz musicians. Bring in samples of jazz for the class to listen to and respond to. Don't forget to involve your music teacher and librarian in this unit.
34. Hear What it Was Like
    Reading Share the art of Jerry Pinkney with the beautiful picture book, God Bless The Child by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr. (HarperCollins, 2004) while enjoying the accompanying CD. Let students see and hear what it was like for African-Americans in the 1930s as they struggled to realize their dreams.

35. Heroes of Our Own
    Writing/History In preparation for Memorial Day, May 31, have students interview family members who took part in World War II, Desert Storm and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc., Put together a display case or a classroom book of "Our Own Heroes." Invite those included to come in and see the finished project.
36. Consumer Awareness
    Math Select one item for each student in the class to be responsible for researching with their parents. Set a duration for the project. Perhaps for one week a particular student will be responsible to record the price of a loaf of bread. At how many different locations was the bread available? What was the cost? What brands were available? Be sure the same size container is always compared, but at the end of the assignment have students write and/or graph the differences in prices between different brands and between different stores selling the same brands. What can be learned from a study like this?
37. Accidents Will Happen
    Science/Health/Math Help students conduct a survey within your classroom and/or school. What statistics can they gather about accidents that occur at school? Are girls or boys injured most often? When and where are the accidents happening? After all the information is gathered, use it to reach some conclusions and suggest changes that could reduce the number of accidents in the future. Is there too little time to change classes? Does one hallway need better lighting? Is the cafeteria floor too slippery? Follow up by writing a plan for improvement and having the students meet with the principal to discuss it.
38. Average Attitudes
    Math Put a list of fictitious grades on the board. Average the grades, then ask one group of students to add a 95 to the list of grades and average them again. Have another group add an 85, another a 75 and another a 55, etc. Does one grade matter to the overall average? Try the same experiment with some dollar amounts. Does one missed paycheck matter? Does one missed day of work matter? How can students bring about positive changes in their grade averages?
39. Career Awareness
    Social Studies May 9-15 is National Police Week, which would be a wonderful time to showcase your local police force and all they do for your community. Enlist your students in putting together items (badges, a list of traffic rules, a picture of your town's police vehicles, etc.) for a display case in honor of the police and contacting the local force to inquire about having some officers come in to talk to your class about the law enforcement profession.
40. All That Jazz
    Music Work with your music teacher to plan a "Jazz Club Afternoon" to celebrate International Jazz Day on May 29. Play samples of famous jazz trumpet, piano and/or clarinet pieces while students tap their toes and broaden their musical horizons. After this introduction, send students to the library to research the development of jazz. Come back together a week later so students can share what they have learned on their own.
41. Knowing Your Audience
    Language Arts Have students take notes on five different advertisements that play during the TV shows they normally watch. The students' notes should include the name and type of product, the intended audience and the purpose of the advertisement. What aspects of the advertisements were included specifically to reach a particular audience? Compare and contrast the advertisements. If the students were going to rewrite the advertisement for an older audience, what would they change, and why? What would students change in order to direct the advertisement to a younger audience? Why would they change those things?

42. Holey Work
    Art/Math/Vocabulary On a 9" x 12" piece of oaktag (or half of an old manila folder), staple a same-sized piece of fabric (or just paint the oaktag). Then take a 9" x 12" piece of construction paper and cut geometric shapes or bubble-lettered vocabulary words out of it. Keep the edges of the paper intact. Attach the holey sheet of construction paper on top of the decorative background sheet and post it on an educational bulletin board.
43. History Comes to Life
    Reading/History Share some of Ann Rinaldi's excellent historical novels in a literature circle. Her latest book, Sarah's Ground (Simon & Schuster, 2004), is about an independent young woman who was hired to refurbish Mount Vernon (the family home of George Washington) in 1861. Discuss the ways in which a family's expectations can influence a child's dream. Can change be good for families? Are there any students who have relatives who went beyond their family's expectations to try a new career? What are the dreams and goals of your students?
44. An Artist's Eye
    Math/Geometry Send your students out into town with disposable cameras to do an architectural field trip, seeking as many different geometric shapes as possible. Put the resulting pictures on a bulletin board or in a computer slide presentation. Which shapes are represented most often? Are any particular shapes used in repetitive placement? Are the tops of buildings where you find circles? Why? What is the significance of using different shapes? Do we need buildings of different shapes? Why not just have the buildings all look the same?
45. Physically Fit
    Health Meet with your physical education teachers to help plan activities for National Running and Fitness Week, May 16-22. Go to www.americanrunning.org for additional fitness ideas for your students. Encourage each student and faculty member to establish a program of personal physical fitness this spring, regardless of whether it includes running. Make schedules and charts and organize buddy systems so you can help one another get started on the road to better health.

For a downloadable version of the Green Pages click here. PDF 641KB

ABOUT THE GREEN PAGES: Green Pages activities are for use in teaching grades PreK through 8. Activities are labeled according to basic skill areas.

THIS MONTH'S CONTRIBUTIONS:
Rich Latta, Plainfield, IL, #3; Sherry Timberman, Albany Township, ME, #5, #6, #12, #20; Joan Macey, Binghamton, NY, #8, #14, #42; Marie Cecchini, West Dundee, IL, #10.

POETRY: "Days Become Weeks," "Golden Lions" by Martin Shaw, Bronxville, NY. "Little Worm," "Dandelion" by Heidi Roemer, Orland Park, IL.

Illustrations by H. Robert Loomis.

May 2004, Vol. 34, No. 8