Susan Jones Teaching: Beach Day: End of the Year Fun!

It's time the last installment of my Countdown to Summer activities! I have another whole day of FUN ready for you! To read about my other themed days, click the links below:
[Camping Day]
[Friendship Day]
[Sports Day]
[Memories Day]

Today, I bring to you an entire day of the beach:

All these activities are part of a fun new product I came out with for the end of the year called Countdown to Summer! This is a 5 day all-encompassing unit which includes lessons and activities for every subject area! There is MORE than enough for you to have boatloads of fun during the last days of school while still reviewing and learning!

Focus skill is place value

Students practice their place value knowledge by adding, gathering, and exchanging base 10 blocks to see how many cubes they get to build their own sandcastle!

Phonics:
Focus skill is beginning digraphs

Collecting seashells! Students play against a partner to try to collect enough words with beginning digraphs to fill all the seashells in their pail. First player to fill their pail, wins!

Focus skill is character traits and changes

I love the Scaredy Squirrel books. I think they are funny and smart at the same time! In Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach Squirrel prepares his own beach at home so he can avoid thee crowds at the real beach. Along the way he ends up needing to go to the beach to collect sand and devises a plan to get in and out without getting noticed. Students will laugh along with the story and answer some questions about Squirrel.

Also, no worries if you can't get your hands on this book! I wrote a short story about a boy and girl who head to the beach with response questions to focus on the same skills!

Focus skill is realistic fiction

Students create their own character, problem and solution when writing a story at the beach! We focus on realistic fiction so I remind my students that it needs to be something that could really happen at the beach! After we brainstorm some possible problems and solutions, students write their own stories to share!

Focus skill is making hypothesis and recording our findings

Students learn about salt water and buoyancy in this fun, science lesson! I bring in 3 eggs, some water, and salt and students make their hypotheses about whether the egg will float or sink in the regular water. Then, we see what happens to the egg with a little salt in the water. Lastly, we stir a lottttt of salt in the water and see what happens to the egg!

Craft:

Students make their own little handprint beach scene for the art project this day! Their hands can create fish or jellyfish, while they can use their fingers to make little seashells along the beach.

Snack:

I recently came back from a cruise where they used this banana dolphin as a garnish on some fruity drink and it was just too cute not to share! All you do is cut a banana in half and then cut the stem right down the middle to create a mouth. I put a little Swedish fish in the mouth and drew on some eyes with a marker. You can put blueberries or goldfish in the cup to make it look like the dolphin is coming out of the water!