Spring Activities for Your Classroom

Trees and flowers are blooming and the weather is warming up, which can mean only one thing: spring is officially here.  With summer just around the corner, it is an exciting time of year in the classroom. Karen and I want to share some of our favorite ways to bring a little spring time fun into the classroom.

As we are approaching end of the year testing time in my classroom, we are reviewing all the skills we have learned this year.   One of those skills is addition and subtraction.   These plastic eggs (found at the Dollar Tree) used as dice holders put a fun spin on reviewing this skill.  Students roll the dice and record a 3 digit number.  They roll again and record the second number, then they add.  Here you can download an addition, subtraction, or number bond template to use in your classroom.  Not working on triple digit? That's ok, the templates can be used for larger or smaller number as well. 

Next up are these fun bunny light up sticks found at the Dollar Spot at Target.  My students love playing games with these.  To play, students get in groups of 3.  One student is the "teacher" and the other two players compete against each other.  The "teachers" roll is to give the players the prompt.  For example they may say, "Find the square that has parallel lines or lines that never cross". The other two players will race to bop the parallel line square with their light up bunny stick.  The first one to hit the correct square wins and keeps the prompt card.  The player to collect the most cards is the winner.  If you don't have these light up sticks, players can take turns flipping over a prompt card and covering the space with a game marker of some sort.  Geometry game can be found here.

Last up, is this fun activity to play with students learning to blend CVC words.  The head of the caterpillar can be made using half a pipe cleaner laced through half an Easter egg (the eggs already have two holes in them) and then use a sharpie or glue on some googly eyes. Last, add the letters you want to use to additional halved eggs.  Students can move the eggs around to make their own blends, or you can arrange the eggs for them. *I recommend using a single color such as purple for the vowel sounds.  This will make it easier when arranging the eggs to make words.

Click the picture to find additional CVC practice as shown below: