Shooting (Adjective) Hoops

We’re a college ball kinda family; there’s not too much NBA on at our house. Despite this, my son found out about the legendary Michael Jordan at school and has name dropped more than a few times how cool he is. When I read the review of Salt in His Shoes on Books 4 Learning, I knew I HAD to find a way to bring Michael Jordan and the book written by his mother and sister into our afterschool learning.

To reinforce parts of speech, I told my son to find adjectives in the story as I read Deloris and Roslyn Jordan’s book aloud. I gave him some orange slips of paper, each printed with a basketball. (Click the image below to download this PDF.)

When he heard a descriptive word, I stopped reading and he wrote the adjective on a basketball.

Finishing the story, I explained that each basketball was already worth one point. If he could wad up the paper and toss the adjective into the hoop (a bucket on the table), it would be worth another point. He had 12 points (the number of describing words he found) before he starting 'shooting hoops' with the adjectives. He finished the game with 15 points!

He had so much fun, he gathered the papers and bucket for another round. Could I have a little Michael Jordan on my hands, I wondered.

Maybe I should go sprinkle some salt in his shoes!

Jellyfish Art & Write

My son’s fascination with jellies hasn’t waned since we did our first jellyfish activity (check out the awesome tunnel book we made here). When I picked up Bob Barner’s book Fish Wish at the library for our youngest boy, I marveled at the amazing art – especially the two pages full of floating jellyfish. Barner’s book was the inspiration for this art project.

Supplies

1 sheet of thin white gift wrap tissue paper (or perhaps used dryer sheets?)

1 piece of blue paper

Grey yarn

Glue stick

Scissors

Pencil

White glue

Jellyfish body patterns (download the ones we used here)

Book

Before we created our own mixed-media jellyfish art, we read a wonderful book by Twig C. George.

What I loved about Jellies: The Life of Jellyfish is that it was written with a child in mind. (It starts “If you were a jellyfish …”.) It was hard to imagine a “bump and sting” lifestyle, but that’s precisely what George’s book had us doing. Seventeen kinds of jellies were pictured and identified, giving my son and I plenty to discuss about their similarities and differences. This book is, of course, non-fiction, but it read like a wonderful fiction adventure in which we both pondered living as a jellyfish would!

Writing

When we were done reading, we put the book aside, and I gave my son some jellyfish writing paper to record five facts he’d learned. (Writing is my son’s achilles heel, so whenever I can sucker him into doing it, I will.)

Download this writing paper here.

Art

Now it was time to make our ‘underwater’ masterpiece. I gave my son the patterns and showed him how they’d be put together.

Download a PDF of the patterns (top) here.

It was up to him to decide which jellies to make and how many. Now he traced the patterns onto the thin tissue paper and cut them out. (Cut carefully, the paper tears easily!) Note: In order to make it to swimming lessons in time, I helped with the cutting.

Once cut, we used a gluestick and layered the tissue onto the blue paper to make the jellyfish.

Lastly, he cut and attached random lengths of grey yarn at the bottom of each jelly as stingers. Some dots of white school glue did the trick.

The final result was amazing!

Ruler of the Ruler (A Measuring Activity)

To have a little fun with measuring, I turned my son into the Ruler of the Ruler, complete with a crown too!

To start our activity, we read Brian P. Cleary’s book How Long or How Wide?: A Measuring Guide (it was my inspiration). If you’re a regular reader than just skip this part; you’ve already heard me gush about Cleary’s books.

This book provided my son some great background on millimeters, inches, centimeters, feet, and yards. After reading the book front to back, my son wanted to go back through and even asked if we could replicate a “12 inches = 1 foot and 3 feet = 1 yard” graphic as an activity. (Whoa, now my son is coming up with his own ideas for activities? My job as a parent just got easier!)

Before I handed him the ruler, I gave him a piece of cardstock to make his Ruler of the Ruler crown.

Download a PDF of the ruler crown here.
Print on heavyweight cardstock, cut along the middle line, and staple or tape together to fit.

When I finally pulled him away from the book, I gave him a ruler and recording sheet. (Click on the picture below to download a PDF.)

His job was to find six things shorter than 12 inches and six things longer than 12 inches. He measured each of them.

Then, he wrote the objects and their measurements on the worksheet to form six 'greater than' math sentences (for example, the table at 56 inches is greater than the book that is only 7 inches).

Go Birdwatching! [Printable Game]

NOTE: This freebie is no longer available for download because iStockphoto limits the number of printable impressions.

If you’ve been following for awhile, you know that my son has a fascination with birds. (Is he the only kid to use spy gear binoculars to birdwatch?)

When he noticed recently in our bird book that many species of birds were dimorphic (the male and female birds look different), I got the idea to make a fun card game to help him recognize these feathered friends as they stopped at our feeder.

Thanks to the recommendation from a blog follower who turned me on to iStockPhoto, and Curt from client relations who assured me giving away this game wouldn’t be a violation of their copyright, I was able to bring this idea to life!

Before we played, we reread my favorite children’s bird book, which I broke down and bought after we were fined by the library for keeping it so long (oops!). To read my glowing review of Frank Mazzola’s book Counting is for the Birds, click here.

The cards I made were to be played like “Go Fish.” Five cards are dealt to each player. Play alternates between players with each looking at the cards in their hand and asking their opponents for the same species of birds as the cards they were holding. A match consists of four cards – two males and two females of the same species.

After reviewing their cards and seeing two cardinals in their hand, a player would ask an opponent, “Do you have any cardinals?” If the opponent does, they must surrender ALL of their cardinal cards. If they don’t, they say, “Go birdwatching!” At which time, the opponent will pull a card from those that remained after cards were dealt, which are spread out facedown between the players.

The individual with the most matches when one player runs out of cards wins. (As you can probably tell from the picture below of my son's matches, I was easily defeated during our first round of play.)

Engineering a Bridge

After I attended a Mom’s Night Out for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) event, I realized that our afterschool curriculum was void of any engineering-related activities. I know what you’re thinking. Engineering for a six-year old?!?

My answer to that is … YES!

We read a fantastic book by Philemon Sturges that highlighted great bridges from around the world. Through the pictures and the words, we were able to take a trip across the globe and explore feats in bridge engineering. By far, the most impressive in the book was a bridge that holds water for boats to travel on. “Say what?!?” Yep, it’s absolutely real. Both my son and I had to pick our jaws up off the table.

Now, I grabbed some straws and paperclips. And we began building. The paperclips easily slipped into the ends of the straws and could be connected together.

It didn’t take long before we’d built the bottom and sides to a bridge. We added more straws to make the top and connected it all together.

Let’s just say, the bridge was a flop. I don’t mean a failure. I mean ... well ... floppy. My son and I were bummed.

our floppy bridge

Then I asked him, “What’s wrong with it? Let’s think like engineers.” And so it was that we decided to stabilize our bridge by reinforcing the paperclip joints with thin strips of duct tape.

Before we taped heavyweight cardstock to the bottom of the bridge (so my son’s Hot Wheels cars could drive over it), we added a few more straws as crossbars for extra support.

The bridge was a HUGE success. It was as much an exercise in engineering as it was problem solving. And my son L-O-V-E-D driving his cars over it. This activity was fun during and fun after – what could be better?!?

NOTE: I think I'll try to find straws that don't bend for our next bridge.