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March means celebrating Dr. Seuss with Green Eggs and Ham, Saint Patrick's Day and leprechaun shenanigans, aliens with our study of the phases of the moon, and SPRING!! SPRING COMES IN MARCH! Can you feel the excitement? Seasons in Ohio bring a lot of changes, and each season means a variety of very different activities for both school and home. Spring brings so much joy of renewed hope! I want to share some of my favorite March Activities with you below. Dr. Seuss and Read Across America ActivitiesIn our classroom, we celebrate Read Across America for an entire week! We start the week off with our good friend, Cat In the Hat! Kids dress in pajamas and bring their favorite books to school. They do mini presentations of their books with the class, and then we have cozy reading time by the fireplace! Did you know there are youtube videos of crackling fires that go on for hours?! The kids LOVE when I turn off the lights and project the fire on the board. They nestle in with their favorite titles and get warm and cozy!  Instead of studying a letter for the week, we focus on word families. The kids are so excited to be able to stretch out words to read on their own!  Day one of Dr. SeussOn the first day of our Dr. Seuss unit, we discuss Theodore Geisel and what it means to have a pen name. We read Cat in the Hat, and the kids create a guided drawing of the famous character. In the past, our cafeteria manager has provided THE most adorable snack for each day of our special week! Here you see Dr. Seuss hats, made with cherry tomatoes and cheese chunks on skewer sticks!  Most students are familiar with "The Lorax" movie, so we watch a collection of songs from Youtube for engagement. Then, I create simple mustaches for the kids to wear in a photo shoot. Who doesn't love a silly mustache?  Our fine motor activity of the week includes building the Cat in the Hat's hat with red solo cups and index cards. WARNING: Once this center activity is out, the kids DO NOT want me to put it away...ever!  Green eggs and ham dayNext up in our unit is Green Eggs and Ham day! The kiddos dress in green, and we try a new GREEN food. Here we tried fruit pies, made with green apples! We graphed the results, and you can see that 8 students liked the new treat, while 3 students did not. I love incorporating trying new foods into classroom learning. In watching our boys grow up as picky eaters, we've found that trying new things with friends always leads to a more positive response. That cafeteria manager of ours couldn't let the day slip by without making actual GREEN EGGS! The kids went crazy over this!  EVERYONE liked green eggs and ham made out of M&M's, Nilla Wafers, and marshmallows!   We incorporate fine motor practice into our classroom learning with a lot of crafting that is tied to our academic concepts. The kids really enjoy name crafts, and this green eggs and ham craft is certainly no exception.  After reading In A People House, students create their own houses with this shape activity during math centers. They craft, count, write, and draw about what is in their houses! (Click the picture below for access to the download.)  One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish DayOn One fish two fish red fish blue fish day, students wear red or blue. We graph colored Goldfish crackers in math class. We also create our own red and blue fish with addition problems during math center time! (Click the photo below to access the download.)  Here's a simple art activity for One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish! Students simply paint a fish tank and add fish!  Fox in Socks DayOn Fox In Socks day, students wear their silly socks to school! They illustrate their own little fox puppets to make them look like they're wearing the silly socks they have on their own feet! During our phonics lesson, we explore the -ox word family by making lists. The students share their lists in small group discussions by making their puppets do the speaking! I love hearing the voice variations they give to their puppets! (Click the photo to access the download.)  the Cat in the hat comes backTo wrap up our week, we read The Cat In the Cat Comes Back, and students wear crazy hair, just like Thing One and Thing two! We also break, mix, and match animal crackers to create our own silly creatures, just like Dr. Seuss!  Saint Patrick's Day ActivitiesNext up, Saint Patrick's week! After reading some of my favorite Saint Patrick's Day books, including The Night Before Saint Patrick's Day, The Gingerbread and the Leprechaun Loose In the School, and The Luckiest Saint Patrick's Day Ever, students prepare a trap! I love this no-prep activity, and the kids have an absolute blast collecting yellow and green manipulatives from all of our classroom building centers. The best part is all of the sorting and fine-motor skills involved! Their creativity gets me every year. In the morning, the only thing left behind is chocolate gold and footprints on the tables. The leprechaun also leaves Lucky Charms behind for an afternoon snack of more sorting (and graphing and counting for some math fun)! During our science activities, we explore rainbows. We make Skittles rainbows, with each child using a bag of fun-size skittles, small paper plates, and cups of hot water. This is another activity the kids just go wild over! I admit that the process is quite satisfying to watch. Our math center includes a shape pot of gold craft, and the kids find this to be quite hilarious. (Click the photo below to access the download.)  Of course, no classroom celebration is complete without celebratory hats! During center time, students make Saint Patrick's Day hats. The hat also includes a beard as an option, and the kids look simply adorable!  We read Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato throughout our story study of the week, and the kids enjoy making leprechaun crafts to go along with our comprehension activities!  More On Saint Patrick's Day!We love Saint Patrick's Day and tying the theme into all areas across the curriculum! We have more activity ideas for you in this blog post! Rock Your School Outer Space Activities for ScienceHave you heard of "Rock Your School" days? If not, today is your students' lucky day! To sum it up, it's a surprise day for the kids where the entire staff thinks outside of the box to make learning extra special. We transform classrooms, dress up, and make it a memorable day filled with thematic learning activities. Last year, we did an Outer Space themed day, and it really was an out of this world kind of a day! After reading about the solar system, we learned the order of the planets with the activity below. (Click the photo to access the download.)  When the kids walk in the door to find an alien teacher, they are thrilled to become aliens, too! They complete this alien craft for morning work!  We tie our favorite space books into our learning, including "There Was an Old Astronaut Who Swallowed the Moon", "Fly Guy Presents Space", "If You Decide to Go to the Moon", and "Happy Birthday, Moon".  We learn about the concepts of time of day and the phases of the moon with this anchor chart.  Alien Math and literacyDuring math, we practice addition to 5 with this spaceship activity.  Our writing lesson includes an outer space writing prompt where students write about what they see outside of the window of their space shuttle, and they create constellations using stickers! Upon completion, I glued students' faces inside the windows of the astronaut crafts.  During literacy centers, students create name crafts with this rocket ship craft activity.  Here are a few photos of our classroom transformation. As a part of our science exploration throughout the week, we focus on what we see in the sky during the day and at night. We also explore weather.  I always like to leave a little something at each child's area to add to the excitement of the start our special day!  More Outer SPace Activities!You guessed it! More details on our space unit can be found in the blog post below! Spring ActivitiesAnd finally, near the end of March, we welcome SPRING! What Makes the Seasons? and Raindrop, Plop! are two of my favorite titles for our introduction of the season. My favorite Spring activity...FLYING KITES! So we do just that! The kids create kite crafts. Once they are dry, we go outside and run around as our kites fly through the air!  More On Spring!We have more to share! Find more Spring activities here! More on Your March and April Themes!For more activity ideas for the month of March (and April), head to the link below! Looking Ahead?We have more ideas for you to add MAGIC to your classroom here! Plan NOw!OR head straight to our shop to find thematic resources for math, writing, reading, science, and social studies!
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